Turkey's first astronaut and three other crew members representing Europe were launched from Florida on Thursday on a voyage to the International Space Station in the latest commercially arranged mission from Texas startup Axiom Space,
Reuters reports.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the Axiom quartet lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket about an hour before sunset from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, beginning a planned 36-hour flight to the orbiting laboratory.
The launch was shown live on an Axiom-SpaceX joint webcast.
The autonomously operated Crew Dragon was expected to reach the International Space Station (ISS) early on Saturday morning and dock with the outpost orbiting some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth and currently occupied by seven regular crew members.
Live video showed the two-stage 25-story-tall launch vehicle streaking into partly cloudy skies over Florida's Atlantic coast atop a fiery, yellowish tail of exhaust.
Cameras inside the crew compartment beamed footage of the four men strapped into their pressurized cabin, seated calmly in helmeted white-and-black flight suits as the rocket soared toward space.
Nine minutes after launch, the Falcon 9's upper stage delivered the crew capsule to its preliminary orbit.
Responding to congratulations from mission control, flight commander Michael López-Alegría radioed back from the Crew Dragon, "As I was saying, it's a team sport. Thank you, guys."
