American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX on Thursday launched the Falcon 9 carrier rocket that placed the Crew Dragon spaceship into orbit.
IMAGE: The Inspiration 4 civilian crew aboard a Crew Dragon capsule and SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 15, 2021. Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters
This was the first-ever fully civilian crew mission dubbed as Inspiration4.
The launch took place at 00.03 GMT from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
'Dragon and the @inspiration4x astronauts are now officially in space! Dragon will conduct two phasing burns to reach its cruising orbit of 575km where the crew will spend the next three days orbiting planet Earth,' SpaceX tweeted later.
This mission is the first orbital mission in the history of spaceflight to be staffed entirely by non-astronauts.
This journey will see the quartet free-flying through Earth's orbit.
