A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule having four European astronauts blasted off at 4:49 pm (local time) [3:19 am IST] from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Thursday.
A rocket carrying Turkey’s first astronaut and three other crew members representing Europe was launched in Florida on Thursday (local time) on a trip to the International Space Station (ISS) in a mission conducted entirely by the private sector.
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the four astronauts — Commander Michael Lopez-Alegra of the US and Spain, Pilot Walter Villadei of the Italian Air Force, and Mission Specialists Alper Gezeravci of Turkiye and Marcus Wandt of Sweden and the European Space Agency — blasted off at 4:49 pm (local time) [3:19 am IST] from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The capsule was launched with the help of a Falcon 9 rocket and commercially arranged by Axiom Space, a Texas-based privately funded space infrastructure developer. The mission marks the beginning of a planned 36-hour flight to the orbiting laboratory, according to news agency Reuters.
The launch was shown live on an Axiom webcast and X handles of SpaceX and Nasa, offering viewers around the globe a front-row seat to the mission.