The United States of America is once again celebrating launching US astronauts into space via a US-made spaceship from US soil. Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley took off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Saturday via the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and a Falcon 9 rocket. It's the first time astronauts have launched into orbit from the USA in nearly a decade.

Also significant is that Saturday's launch marked the first-ever privately owned human vehicle to launch into orbit. All other launches having been government programs. With that said, the USA's civilian space agency NASA still funded the commercial venture.

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Behnken and Hurley arrived at the International Space Station Sunday morning, disembarking the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and stepping onto the station floating 400m above the Earth. The pair is expected to stay on the ISS anywhere between one and three months.

Upon opening the gate between the ISS and the SpaceX capsule, Behnken and Hurley were met by three other denizens of the space station. Russian cosmonauts Anatoli Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner, as well as NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy were already living therein.

The mission is already a stunning success, though clearly SpaceX, NASA, and the USA's plans extend much, much further.

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