'The ascent was incredible,' McArthur says of the ride to space. We hope you enjoyed the show.' Crew Dragon commander Shane Kimbrough, foreground, and co-pilot Megan McArthur welcome the public aboard their spacecraft in a video downlink two hours after reaching orbit. There might have been some hooting and giggling up here while all that was going on. 'The ascent was incredible, the ride was really smooth, we couldn't have asked for anything better. 'Hello Earth! It's great to be back in space again,' McArthur, making her second space flight, said in a video downlink from orbit.

The launching provided a spectacular pre-dawn show for area residents and tourists as the Falcon 9 climbed skyward, shattering the morning calm along Florida's 'Space Coast' with a thunderous wall of sound as the booster streaked away to the northeast over the Atlantic Ocean atop a sky-lighting jet of flame. SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasts off from Kennedy Space Center early on April 23, 2021, boosting a Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts toward orbit for a day-long flight to the International Space Station. Strapped in four abreast, commander Shane Kimbrough, co-pilot Megan McArthur, Frenchman Thomas Pesquet and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, all space veterans making their first flights aboard a SpaceX capsule, monitored the automated ascent on large touch-screen displays. EDT, throttled up to a combined 1.7 million pounds of thrust and smoothly pushed the slender booster away from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. Running 24 hours late because of threatening off-shore weather, the rocket's nine first stage engines ignited at 5:49 a.m.

Lighting up the pre-dawn sky, a Falcon 9 rocket with a previously flown first stage roared to life and shot away up the East Coast early Friday, boosting a refurbished SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule into orbit carrying four astronauts on a day-long trip to the International Space Station.

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