SpaceX Dragon crew blasts off for International Space Station

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off to the International Space Station carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and the second Emirati to voyage to space.

The SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 mission launched from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a livestream of the launch showed.

The launch had been scrubbed on Monday just minutes before liftoff because of a clog in a filter that supplies ignition fluid to start the rocket engines.

The US space agency tweeted that the SpaceX Dragon Endeavour departed "lighting up the skies as the crew heads to orbit."

The Dragon crew capsule, dubbed Endeavour, is scheduled to dock with the ISS  on Friday after a 24-hour voyage.

NASA's Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, Russia's Andrey Fedyaev and Sultan al-Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates are to spend six months on the orbiting station.

Neyadi, 41, will be the fourth astronaut from an Arab country and the second from the oil-rich UAE to journey to space.

While aboard the ISS, the Crew-6 members will conduct dozens of experiments including studying how materials burn in microgravity and researching heart, brain and cartilage functions.

The current crew is the sixth to be transported by a SpaceX rocket to the ISS.

NASA pays SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the ISS roughly every six months.

The agency expects Crew-6 to have a handover of several days with the four members of Crew-5 who have been on the ISS since October. Crew-5 will then return to Earth.