(31 May 2020) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus137165

A rocket ship designed and built by Elon Musk's SpaceX company has lifted off with two Americans on a history-making flight to the International Space Station.
The spacecraft took off Saturday afternoon from the same launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, that was used during the Apollo missions to the moon a half-century ago.
Despite NASA's insistence that the public stay safe by staying home, spectators gathered along beaches and roads hours in advance.
The flight ushers in a new era in commercial space travel and marks the first time NASA has launched astronauts from U.S. soil in nearly a decade.
Ever since the space shuttle was retired in 2011, NASA has relied on Russian rockets launched from Kazakhstan to take U.S. astronauts took and from the space station.
The mission unfolded amid the gloom of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed over 100,000 Americans, and racial unrest across the U.S. over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police.
NASA officials and others held out hope the flight would would be lift American spirits.

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