SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon crew spacecraft rocketed into the blue Florida sky, as NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov began their approximately 7-hour, 50-minute journey to the International Space Station.
Liftoff occurred at 11:10 a.m. EDT from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
Soon, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage will separate from the second stage and attempt a landing at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
At the time of launch, the space station was orbiting at 17,500 miles per hour (28,200 kilometers per hour) about 263 miles over Earth, northwest of Havana, Cuba. It passes directly over NASA’s Kennedy Space Center about 1 minute, 37 seconds after launch.