Astronauts Head to Space Station as Clouds Stay Just Far Enough Away
An initial launch attempt on Thursday was thwarted in the last minute of the countdown by a threatening cloud above the launch site at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
On Friday, a U-shape formation of clouds encroached but stayed just far enough away for the launch to proceed.
'We got very lucky today, I would say,' Steve Stich, the manager of NASA's commercial crew program, said during a postlaunch news conference.
The mission is known as Crew-11, because it is the 11th time that SpaceX, the rocket company run by Elon Musk, has taken astronauts to the International Space Station as part of the usual rotation of crew members living and working in orbit.
Aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft are Zena Cardman and Michael Fincke of NASA, Kimiya Yui of Japan and Oleg Platonov of Russia.
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