SpaceX raised a 215-foot-tall (65-meter) Falcon 9 rocket on pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida this week, shortly after the launcher rolled out of the company’s hangar with a Crew Dragon spaceship to ferry four astronauts to the International Space Station.
The Falcon 9 rocket emerged from SpaceX’s hangar at the southern perimeter of pad 39A Monday night. A transporter carried the rocket up the ramp to the historic launch complex, where hydraulics hoisted the rocket vertical in preparation for a launch scheduled for 7:49 p.m. EST Saturday (0049 GMT Sunday).
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft is mounted on top of the Falcon 9 rocket. The capsule will launch on SpaceX’s first operational crew rotation flight to the space station, carrying NASA commander Mike Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Shannon Walker, and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi on a six-month expedition in orbit.
These photos were taken Monday night and Tuesday as SpaceX prepared to test-fire the Falcon 9 rocket’s engines ahead of the crew launch.
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