The Falcon 9 launcher, launched by billionaire Elon Musk and SpaceX into orbit, was launched from a space station on the east coast of Florida at 9:04 a.m. local time. Nine minutes after launching the launcher accelerator used in earlier missions, it returned to Earth and landed vertically on a platform anchored in the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. The release was broadcast live on the Space Agency (NASA) YouTube video sharing portal.

In about 22 hours, the crew dragon will join the 400-kilometer-long space station, which currently has two Russians and an American astronaut.

The spacecraft has three American astronauts – Raja Chari, Kyla Barron and Tom Marshburn – and the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer of Germany is the 600th to fly into space.

One of them became a member of the crew last week due to health reasons not mentioned last year, and their names were not made public by NASA. All four will spend about six months at ISS.

The Russian spacecraft has launched U.S. astronauts into space for the third time in nine years since the end of the 2011 space shuttle program. The previous space mission ended on Tuesday when four astronauts returned to Earth with the landing unit of the crew dragon Endeavor spacecraft.

Source of the cover image: Getty Images.