4K Video: The launch of Crew 4 as seen from the press site

SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon spacecraft, fixed to the forward end of a Falcon 9 rocket, emerged Thursday from the company’s hangar at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the quarter-mile journey to its launch mount at pad 39A, where liftoff is scheduled early Saturday on a critical test flight before astronauts strap into the ship later this year.

NASA has formally certified SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch all but the space agency’s most costly robotic science missions, beginning with a a U.S.-French oceanography satellite set for liftoff from California in July.

The quick pace of missions is notably quick for the intelligence gathering agency. Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base happened at 5:29 a.m. PDT (8:29 a.m. EDT, 1229 UTC).