PHOTOS: SpaceX completes pre-dawn Crew-2 launch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - What a beautiful morning!

On Friday, the Falcon 9 rocket thundered into the morning sky from Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 5:49 a.m. ET. The four astronauts on board are now headed to the International Space Station (ISS).

RELATED: Godspeed! SpaceX launches 4 astronauts to the International Space Station

Photos from across Central Florida are pouring in of the pre-dawn launch.

The mission marks SpaceX’s third crewed flight in partnership with NASA, following its previous launch Crew-1 and Demo-2 missions. The launch also marks the first time that SpaceX reuses a rocket and a capsule for a mission.

RELATED: SpaceX Crew-2 timeline: What's in store for the astronauts following liftoff

The SpaceX Crew-2 mission includes NASA's Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. This will be the first mission to fly two international partner crew members as part of the agency's commercial crew program.

NASA said that the crew will spend six months in space. At the ISS, they will join Crew-1 NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi. In addition, NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov are also there.

RELATED: Meet the astronauts on the NASA, SpaceX Crew-2 mission

For nearly a decade, the only route to the space station for astronauts was on Russian rockets. NASA turned to private companies for taxi service after the space shuttles retired in 2011. SpaceX has been shipping cargo to the space station since 2012, using the same kind of rocket and similar capsules, and recycling those parts as well.

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