KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla., April 23 (UPI) -- The launch of astronauts to the International Space Station on Friday morning from Florida on a reused SpaceX rocket and capsule represents a new era in human spaceflight, company founder Elon Musk said.
The Falcon 9 rocket carried the Crew Dragon Endeavour capsule into a clear, cool predawn sky at the planned liftoff time, 5:49 a.m. EDT. The mission, known as SpaceX Crew-2, is the first to carry people on a previously flown SpaceX rocket and capsule.
The capsule is scheduled to dock at the space station at 5:10 a.m. EDT Saturday, with the astronauts starting to enter the orbiting laboratory at 7:15 a.m.
"We're excited to represent our nation, and all of humanity, off the Earth for the Earth, and Endeavour is ready to go," NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, the mission commander, said minutes before launch.
The countdown proceeded flawlessly, with SpaceX principal engineer John Insprucker saying the company tracked no issues in the hour before liftoff.
Five minutes after liftoff, the rocket hurtled toward orbit at nearly 6,000 mph. A little over nine minutes into flight, the capsule achieved an orbit to meet the space station, according to launch teams.
Kimbrough, 53, joins fellow NASA astronaut Megan McArthur, 49, the mission pilot; and two mission specialists -- French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, 43, of the European Space Agency and Japanese astronaut Akihito Hoshide, 52.
The mission is the first to carry people on a refurbished SpaceX rocket and capsule that already flew in space.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said after the launch that having people on his company's rockets still is nerve-wracking for him.
"I suppose it does get a little bit easier, but it's still extremely intense," Musk said in a post-launch news conference at Kennedy Space Center. "I can't sleep the night before launch."
Musk said he looks forward to advancing human spaceflight to go beyond the space station's relatively low orbit. SpaceX won a new contract from NASA on April 16 to develop the company's Starship deep-space rocket as a human lunar lander.
Reusing rockets and capsules is vital to furthering such space exploration, Musk said.
SpaceX has constantly worked to improve the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon capsule, said Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which contracts with SpaceX and Boeing to develop privately owned spacecraft to fly to the space station.
"SpaceX and NASA work so well together," Stitch said. "At times in out meetings, people will finish each other's sentences. ... It's just tremendous teamwork."
The astronaut walkout, a tradition for crewed launches, included a unique family moment when astronaut Bob Behnken and his son said goodbye to McArthur, Behnken's wife.
Less than a year ago, McArthur was the one saying goodbye with the couple's son May 30 as Behnken was ready to be launched on the first-ever SpaceX crewed mission.
McArthur sat in the same seat on the Endeavour that Behnken occupied during his flight.
NASA and SpaceX reorganized the walkout tradition last year to include a final goodbye with family members before astronauts leave Earth.
The quartet that lifted off Friday is scheduled to spend six months doing science experiments and maintenance on the space station, which in 2020 surpassed 20 years of having humans aboard.
NASA still considers the Crew Dragon capsules to be a new spacecraft, having launched people for the first time May 30. The Endeavour capsule, as this one is named, will briefly join SpaceX's Crew Dragon Resilience before that spacecraft departs Wednesday, returning four other astronauts to Earth.
McArthur noted that she is the only member of Crew-2 who hasn't had a long-term mission to space. She flew in 2009 on a 12-day space shuttle flight, STS-125, which was the last of four missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
"Getting to fly on a new vehicle and getting to stay in space long duration is something obviously completely new for me," McArthur said at press conference last week. "I think it's going to be like the difference between visiting a country for a business trip and then maybe moving there."
Kimbrough flew on a space shuttle flight in 2008 and to the International Space Station via a Russian Soyuz capsule in 2016.
Kimbrough's previous stay on the space station overlapped with Pesquet's previous mission there, when they performed two spacewalks together.
Pesquet is the first astronaut to represent the European Space Agency on a SpaceX rocket. The two previous SpaceX crewed launches carried five NASA astronauts and one Japanese astronaut.
"We are very excited, of course, that for the first time a European astronaut, Thomas, can also fly in the Crew Dragon to the International Space Station," said Frank DeWinne, head of the European agency's ISS program.
Hoshide has been to the space station twice, in 2008 and 2012.
The Crew-2 astronauts are scheduled to depart from the space station no earlier than October and splash down in the Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic Ocean near Florida.
