Elon Musk's SpaceX rocket launches into space

A Falcon 9 rocket with two U.S. astronauts aboard lifted off Saturday en route to the International Space Station. It had been nine years since NASA astronauts had been sent into space.

Video Transcript

- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. Ignition. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon. Go NASA. Go SpaceX. Godspeed, Bob and Doug!

[CHEERING]

- America has launched.

- What now, [INAUDIBLE]?

- And so rises a new era of American space flight, and with it, the ambitions of a new generation continuing the dream. 20 seconds into the flight, stage 1 propulsion is nominal.

- T-plus 30 seconds into this historic mission. Flying crew on board Dragon at Falcon 9. And look at them go!

- Falcon power telemetry nominal.

- N1D, throttle down.

- We're throttling down to get ready for the period of maximum dynamic pressure. We're in the throttle rocket. Reports say all systems are go.

- Vehicle to supersonic.

- We've exceeded Mach 1 on the Falcon 9.

- N1D throttle up.

- We're throttling back up--

- Max Q.

- --to full power as we're through max Q.

- Copy, 1 bravo.

- And we heard that 1 bravo callout. That's just the second abort zone that they're in. They'll continue to be on this until the first stage has done its job, and they switch over to the second. At this point, Bob and Doug pulling about 2.3 Gs, 2.3 times the Earth's gravity already--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

- --1,500 miles per hour.

- We've heard the callout for Mvac engine chill. That's giving the Mvac engine ready to light. That'll come at about 2:44 into flight. Right now, everything continuing to look good. Next major event--

[APPLAUSE]

--coming up is gonna be the triple. We'll have main engine cutoff of the nine first-stage engines, stage separation, and then ignition of the second-stage engine to continue to carry astronauts into orbit coming up in about 20 seconds.

- N1D throttle down.

- We heard we're throttling down the Merlin engines on the first stage. And we have MECO.

- MECO.

- 2 alpha.

- Falcon stage separation confirmed.

[APPLAUSE AND CHEERS]

- Copy 2 alpha.

Mvac ignition.

- All right, we have stage separation confirmed. The first stage beginning its flight back, and the second stage being powered by that single Merlin 1D vacuum engine has ignited and is now--

- [INAUDIBLE] signal lost.

- --carrying Bob and Doug into orbit.