SpaceX successfully launched its first female-led mission, Crew-5, to the International Space Station (ISS) yesterday, taking along a Russian cosmonaut who is the first from the country to board an American spacecraft amid global tensions over the war in Ukraine amid the first to take off from US soil since 2002.

Russia's Anna Kikina switched places with a NASA astronaut who took her seat aboard a Russian Soyuz flight to the ISS last month under a new ride-sharing deal signed by NASA and Roscosmos in July.

The 215-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket ignited its nine Merlin engines at 12:01 pm, generating about 1.7 million pounds of thrust and shot off toward space.

The rocket's upper stage delivered the Dragon capsule into a preliminary orbit and the reusable lower-stage booster flew itself back to Earth to land on a drone recovery vessel, 'Just Read the Instructions,' floating in the Atlantic Ocean. 

The mission, dubbed Crew-5, is the first to have a female commander, NASA's Nicole Aunapu Mann, who is also the first indigenous woman to launch into space.

The pair are joined by NASA's Josh Cassada and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Koichi Wakata and all are set to dock on the ISS Thursday to begin a 150-day science mission aboard the orbital laboratory some 250 miles above Earth. 

A SpaceX director on the ground congratulated the crew when the capsule successfully separated from the first stage: 'While October 3 belongs to 'Mean Girls,' October 5 will forever belong to Crew-5. God speed Endurance, Cheers.' (Daily Mail)