An international crew of four astronauts launched toward the International Space Station from Florida on Friday aboard a SpaceX rocket, beating gloomy weather to embark on a routine NASA mission that could be the first of many to last a couple months longer than usual.

The four-person astronaut crew -- two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and Japanese astronaut -- boarded SpaceX's Dragon capsule sitting atop its Falcon 9 rocket at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and blasted off at 11:43 a.m. ET. They will arrive at the ISS on Saturday.