An unmanned rocket owned by privately held Space Exploration Technologies blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today for a mission designed to be the first commercial flight to the International Space Station.
The 54m (178ft) tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3.44am local time from a refurbished launch pad just south of where Nasa launched its now-retired space shuttles.
Less than 10 minutes later, the rocket delivered its cargo - a Dragon capsule with 544kg of supplies for the station crew - into orbit.
"Feels like a giant weight just came off my back," company founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Twitter after Dragon deployed its solar panels, the first of several key milestones that must be met before the spacecraft is cleared to dock at the station. "Falcon flew perfectly!!" Mr Musk wrote.
Nasa is counting on companies like Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to take over the task of flying cargo - and eventually astronauts - to the space station, which orbits about 390 km above Earth. Nasa is currently dependent on Russia to fly crew to the station, at a cost of more than $60 million (€47 million) per person. Russia, Europe and Japan also fly cargo to the station.
If its test flight is successful, SpaceX would become the first private company to reach the space station, a microgravity research complex for biological, materials, fluid physics and other science experiments and technology demonstrations.
SpaceX and a second company, Orbital Sciences Corp, already hold contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion to fly cargo to the station. SpaceX also is among four firms vying to build space taxis to fly astronauts, tourists and non-Nasa researchers.
Separately, Nasa contributed nearly $400 million to SpaceX's $1.2 billion commercial space programme, which includes development and up to three test flights of Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules.
Reuters