Cape Canaveral (US): SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on Sunday on the first full-fledged taxi flight for NASA by a private company.
The Falcon rocket thundered into the night from Kennedy Space Center with three Americans and one Japanese, the second crew to be launched by SpaceX.
The Dragon capsule on top reached orbit nine minutes later.
It is due to reach the space station late Monday and remain there until spring.
Sidelined by the coronavirus himself, SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk was forced to monitor the action from afar.
He tweeted that he "most likely" had a moderate case of COVID-19.
Also read: ISS crew celebrate arrival of SpaceX capsule
Cheers and applause erupted at SpaceX Mission Control in Hawthorne, California, after the capsule reached orbit and the first-stage booster landed on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
Vice President Mike Pence, chairman of the National Space Council, travelled from Washington and joined NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine to watch the launch.
Outside the space centre gates, officials anticipated hundreds of thousands of spectators to jam nearby beaches and towns.
The three-men, one-woman crew led by Hopkins, an Air Force colonel, named their capsule Resilience in a nod not only to the pandemic but also racial injustice and contentious politics.
It's about as diverse as space crews come, including physicist Shannon Walker, Navy Cmdr. Victor Glover, the first Black astronaut on a long-term space station mission.
And Japan's Soichi Noguchi, who became the first person in almost 40 years to launch on three types of spacecraft.
(AP)
