The Crew Dragon launched lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 7.49 am GMT, (2.49am EST).
The Demo-1 mission, SpaceX's inaugural flight with NASA's Commercial Crew Program, will provide the teams an end-to-end flight test to ensure the spacecraft and systems operate as designed before launching with astronauts. Across the country at SpaceX Mission Control in Hawthorne, California, company employees went wild, cheering every step of the way until the capsule successfully reached orbit.
After the shuttle program was shut down in July 2011 following a 30-year run, NASA began outsourcing the logistics of its space missions. SpaceX needs to nail the debut of the capsule before putting people on board later this year.
The capsule is due to stay on the ISS for a period of five days, where it will undergo testing from the station's resident astronauts. That's the main reason he founded SpaceX in 2002, the billionaire entrepreneur has said repeatedly over the years - to help humanity become a multiplanet species.
The Crew Dragon capsule was launched on top of one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets, and contains 400lb of cargo, as well as a sophisticated crash dummy named Ripley, a reference to Sigourney Weaver's character in the Alien franchise.
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Tom Watson said he had also asked for a meeting with Jeremy Corbyn to discuss how to crack down on anti-Semitism within Labour. But Labour said he had effectively been sacked.
Highlights from the SpaceX's historic Demo-1 Crew Dragon Test Flight from Kennedy Space Center. "And then re-entry", Musk said at a press conference, held in the Kennedy Space Center, when asked which stages of the Dragon 2 mission he anxious about most.
Either SpaceX or Boeing will have bragging rights as the first private company to launch humans into space on its own rocket, although plans call for rockets built by both companies to carry astronauts into space. Soyuz tickets have skyrocketed over the years; NASA now pays $82 million per seat. "Unless something goes wrong I should think we'll be flying (people) this year; this summer, hopefully". The spacecraft will rely on its computers to autonomously fly the spacecraft gently alongside the station and then attach itself to one of the docking ports. SpaceX and Boeing are leading that charge, so the successful Crew Dragon launch represents a major milestone moment. The more immediate goal is to avoid harming the space station and its three occupants: an American, Canadian and Russian.
Boeing is also in the race to end NASA's eight-year drought of launching USA astronauts on US rockets from US soil.
Early on Friday, Musk, who is also chief executive officer of electric carmaker Tesla Inc, tweeted a photo of the inside of Crew Dragon capsule with Ripley strapped inside.
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