Elon Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, will send sent four astronauts into low-Earth orbit as part of its first operational crewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS) this weekend.
For Nasa, it’s a landmark event, because it marks the beginning of using private firms as a ‘taxi service’ to fly crews to and from the space station.
The event has also caught the attention of people down on earth, with many hoping to follow the crew on their journey.
Here’s how you can watch the launch of the SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket:
When is the SpaceX launch?
The rocket will blast off from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida at 7.27pm EST on Sunday, 14 November.
That’s 12:27am on Monday morning over on this side of the pond.
The crew, made of up of one Japanese astronaut and two Americans, were originally scheduled to take off just after midnight on Saturday, but the launch got delayed due to poor weather conditions.
The Nasa and SpaceX teams pushed it back by one day because of ‘onshore winds and to enable recovery of the first stage booster, which is planned to be reused to launch the Crew-2 mission next year,’ according to the Nasa website.
This will be the second time SpaceX has launched astronauts to ISS after being commissioned by Nasa, who retired their own shuttle fleet in 2011.
How to watch the SpaceX launch from the UK
You can tune into Nasa’s continuous coverage – which will cover the prelaunch, dock and arrival activities – via the Nasa website.
The SpaceX website will also live stream the event.
It is not known if Elon Musk will make it to the launch this weekend, after the billionaire tweeted that he has tested positive and negative for Covid-19.
The billionaire claims ‘something extremely bogus is going on’ after taking four rapid tests on Friday. Two came back negative and two came back positive.
Throughout the pandemic, Mr Musk has been critical of lockdown measures which he previously described as ‘forcibly imprisoning people in their homes’ and ‘fascist.’
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