Two Americans, a French astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut said Sunday they are eager to blast off Wednesday on a flight to the International Space Station, replacing four crew members who cut their mission short and returned to Earth last month because of a medical issue.Crew 12 commander Jessica Meir, Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev are scheduled for launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 6:01 a.m. EST Wednesday. If all goes well, they’ll catch up with the lab Thursday, moving in for docking at 10:30 a.m.A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket stands poised for launch Wednesday atop pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to send a two-woman, two-man crew to the International Space Station. / Credit: SpaceXThe flight had been on hold until later this month, after NASA’s Artemis II moon mission launched and returned to Earth. But the moonshot was delayed to March because of a hydrogen leak in its Space Launch System rocket, clearing the way for NASA to move up the Falcon 9 space station flight.AdvertisementAdvertisementMeir and her crewmates flew to the Kennedy Space Center from Houston on Friday. Their Falcon 9 rocket was erected at the nearby Space Force Station early Saturday, and SpaceX test fired its first stage engines before dawn Sunday to set the stage for launch.”We arrived a couple of days ago, and this is really starting to feel like we’re about to launch,” Meir said during a virtual news conference at the Kennedy Space Center, where the crew is in pre-flight medical quarantine. “You know, we’ve seen the rocket. We’ve been sp …
