Armed with cameras, crowds gathered near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday (November 10) to watch NASA and private rocket company SpaceX launch four astronauts into orbit sending a veteran spacewalker, two younger crewmates chosen for future lunar missions and a German materials scientist on their way to the International Space Station, Reuters reports.
The SpaceX-built launch vehicle, consisting of a Crew Dragon capsule and a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket, blasted off into the night sky as its nine Merlin engines roared to life at about 9 p.m. (0200 GMT Thursday (November 11)).
The three American astronauts and their European Space Agency crewmate were due to arrive at the space station, orbiting some 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth, on Thursday evening following a flight of about 22 hours.
The flight marks the third "operational" space station crew sent to orbit aboard a Dragon capsule since NASA and SpaceX teamed up to resume space launches from American soil last year, following a nine-year hiatus at the end of the U.S. space shuttle program in 2011.
