Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has launched four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, including the first person from the Arab world to go for an extended months long stay.
The Falcon rocket bolted from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida shortly after midnight, illuminating the night sky as it headed up the East Coast.
According to Al Jazeera, the trip to the International Space Station (ISS), a laboratory orbiting some 420km (250 miles) above Earth, was expected to take nearly 25 hours, with rendezvous planned for about 06:15 GMT on Friday.
Nearly 80 spectators from the United Arab Emirates watched from the launch site as astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi – only the second Emirati to fly to space – blasted off on his six-month mission.
They will replace a US-Russian-Japanese crew that has been up there since October.
