CAPE KENNEDY – A rocket ship designed and built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company lifted off with two Americans on a history-making flight to the International Space Station.

The spacecraft took off Saturday afternoon from the same launch pad at Cape Canaveral that was used during the Apollo missions to the moon a half-century ago.

The flight ushers in a new era in commercial space travel and marks the first time NASA has launched astronauts from U.S. soil in nearly a decade.

Saturday's flight was the first launch of astronauts into orbit by a private company.

The SpaceX Crew Dragon carried by a Falcon 9 rocket was headed to the International Space Station on an open-ended mission.

Despite some afternoon storms, the weather cleared just in time for launch to go ahead as planned.

It was nine years ago that Americans last lifted off from American soil on an American rocket. Ever since, the U.S. has been paying Russia to ferry astronauts to the space station.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp., trading as SpaceX, is a private American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company headquartered in Hawthorne, California. It was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars.

Story Date: June 1, 2020