CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Four astronauts arrived at their launch pad early Friday morning for a SpaceX flight to the International Space Station, the company’s third bon voyage for a NASA crew in under a year.
The two Americans, one French and one Japanese astronaut climbed into white gull-winged Teslas for the ride to their rocket, all courtesy of Elon Musk’s companies.
Musk met with the astronauts before they headed to the pad, wishing them well from a safe social distance. SpaceX aimed for a split-second liftoff at 5:49 a.m., an hour before sunrise.
Good weather was forecast, not only at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center but all the way up the East Coast in the event of a launch abort and emergency splashdown.