Mr Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX launched four astronauts on a flight to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) first full-fledged mission sending a crew into orbit aboard a privately owned spacecraft.
SpaceX's newly designed Crew Dragon capsule, which the crew has dubbed Resilience, lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7.27pm eastern time (8.27am Monday Singapore time) from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
"That was one heck of a ride," astronaut Mike Hopkins said from Crew Dragon to SpaceX mission control about an hour after lift-off. "There was tons of smiles."
Crew Dragon was to gradually raise its orbit for the next 27 hours through a series of onboard thruster firings, giving the astronauts time to eat pre-packaged dinners and roughly eight hours to rest before docking at the ISS at 11pm eastern time on Monday.
An air leak caused an unexpected drop in capsule pressure less than two hours before launch, NASA officials said. But technicians said they conducted a successful leak check, and the scheduled launch was on.
The Resilience crew includes Mr Hopkins and two fellow NASA astronauts, mission pilot Victor Glover and physicist Shannon Walker. They are joined by Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, making his third trip to space after previously flying on the United States shuttle in 2005 and Soyuz in 2009.
The launch to the space station, an orbiting laboratory some 400km above Earth, was originally scheduled to begin last Saturday. But it was postponed for a day due to forecasts of gusty windsremnants of Tropical Storm Etathat would have made a return landing for the Falcon 9's reusable booster stage difficult, NASA officials said.
VP Mike Pence attended the launch and said beforehand that under President Donald Trump, America had "renewed our commitment to lead in human space exploration".
President-elect Joe Biden tweeted his congratulations, saying the launch was "a testament to the power of science".
NASA is calling the flight its first "operational" mission for a rocket and crew-vehicle system that was 10 years in the making.
It represents a new era of commercially developed spacecraftowned and operated by a private entity rather than NASA for sending Americans into orbit.
A trial flight of the SpaceX Crew Dragon in August, carrying just two astronauts to and from the space station, marked NASA's first human space mission to be launched from US soil in nine years, following the end of the space shuttle programme in 2011.
In the intervening years, US astronauts have had to hitch rides aboard Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.
SpaceX's launch was the first of six operational missions for NASA. The company has also booked private astronaut missions, including one slated to carry actor Tom Cruise in the coming years.
Mr Musk, SpaceX's chief executive who is also CEO of electric carmaker Tesla, did not watch the lift-off from the launch control room, NASA said. Mr Musk said last Saturday that he "most likely" has a moderate case of Covid-19.
SpaceX and NASA have determined Mr Musk had not come into contact with anyone who interacted with the astronauts.
- REUTERS