Successful takeoff for SpaceX, Saturday evening, with the putting into orbit of the Crew Dragon capsule, at the top of a Falcon 9 rocket, heading to the International Space Station (ISS). This time, the weather was favorable for a departure, scheduled for 9:22 p.m. (French time) in front of cameras around the world. It is the first manned space flight by a private company, led by Elon Musk.
Donald Trump made the trip to the Kennedy Space Center to follow the launch. The American company has launched two NASA astronauts into space from Florida, offering America a new form of space transportation after a nine-year hiatus.
Small hot spot fading into the sky, astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley found themselves propelled in ten minutes 200 km above the oceans, spinning at 20 times the speed of sound towards the International Space Station they should catch up with Sunday if all goes well.
"Congratulations [...] on this first manned trip for Falcon 9, it was incredible," said astronaut Doug Hurley, commanding officer, filmed along with his teammate by a camera on board.
As bad weather threatened to cause a new postponement, the rocket built by SpaceX near Los Angeles took off without incident, in a ultimately mostly blue sky, at 3:22 p.m. (7:22 p.m. GMT) of the Kennedy space center, under the eyes of tens of thousands of people settled along the beaches in the area.
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"It's a dream come true, I never thought it would ever happen," said Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002 in California, this week.