SpaceX heading for ISS on historic private crewed flight

A SpaceX rocket carrying two veteran NASA astronauts was headed for the International Space Station on Saturday on the first ever crewed flight by a private company, ushering in a new era in space travel. The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard blasted off flawlessly in a cloud of bright orange flame and smoke from Florida's Kennedy Space Center for the 19-hour voyage to the orbiting space station. "Let's light this candle," Hurley, the spacecraft mission commander, told SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, before liftoff at 3:22 pm (1922 GMT) from NASA's fabled Launch Pad 39A.

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