Elon Musk's SpaceX Launches 4 Crew-3 Astronauts To Space

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Wednesday kicked off the Crew-3 mission in collaboration with the space agency NASA.

What Happened: The mission was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 9:03 p.m. ET for the nearly day-long journey to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Crew-3 mission is ferrying NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer to the ISS.

Crew-3 on orbit pic.twitter.com/VFP1fXwlfZ

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 11, 2021

SpaceX shared a short clip of the crew on orbit and said it expects autonomous docking at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday. 

Crew-3 is SpaceX’s third operational crewed flight for NASA and the fifth human spaceflight mission that SpaceX has launched since May 2020.

See Also: Elon Musk's SpaceX Now Expects To Launch Crew-3 On Wednesday After 2nd Delay

Dragon has separated from Falcon 9’s second stage and is on its way to the @space_station! Autonomous docking tomorrow at ~7:10 p.m. EST pic.twitter.com/BSZNHTkQZ5

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 11, 2021

Why It Matters: The Crew-3 mission was first scheduled to take place on Oct. 31 but was delayed twice. SpaceX and NASA SpaceX then planned to return the Crew-2 astronauts before the Crew-3 is launched. 

SpaceX on Monday returned the four Crew-2 astronauts who spent about six months in space as part of the agency’s second long-duration crewed flight after launching in April atop a Falcon 9 rocket. 

SpaceX and NASA are working on multiple projects including a $2.9 billion lunar landing contract. Earlier this month, Amazon.com Inc AMZN founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin lost the lucrative lawsuit against NASA for awarding the contract to SpaceX.

Musk dreams of colonizing Mars and has in the past said he remains “highly confident” that SpaceX would land humans on Mars by 2026.

SpaceX and Blue Origin also compete with each other in the recently launched space tourism flights.

See Also: Elon Musk's SpaceX Brings NASA Crew-2 Astronauts Back Home