NASA Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley Head for ISS on Historic SpaceX Flight

Two veteran NASA astronauts were headed for the International Space Station after Elon Musk’s SpaceX became the first commercial company to launch a rocket carrying humans into orbit. The SpaceX launch is the first of American astronauts from US soil since the space shuttle program ended in 2011 and the first crewed flight ever by a private company.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying Crew Dragon was launched at 3:22 PM US Eastern Time from Kennedy Space Center. The Falcon 9 successfully deployed the vehicle into orbit before returning back to Earth and landing on SpaceX’s Atlantic Ocean drone ship.

The flight was the fulfillment of a risky bet by NASA under the Obama administration to entrust the private sector to fly astronauts. For SpaceX, it was the climax of an improbable odyssey that began in 2002 when Elon Musk founded a space company with the goal of traveling to Mars.