The Falcon 9 rocket liftoff from Cape Canaveral in Florida took place as scheduled at 11:49 a.m. The flight of Thomas Pesquet was to take place the day before, Thursday, April 22, but the weather forced NASA to postpone the departure.

The French astronaut and his companions on the Alpha mission (Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur and Akihiko Hoshide will now sail in orbit for about twenty hours before docking with the International Space Station (ISS).

Falcon 9's first stage landed safely

SpaceX has confirmed that the first stage of the launcher managed to land on its platform. Falcon 9's first stage landed safely

Arrival on the ISS scheduled for 11:10 on Saturday

That's it, Thomas Pesquet is in orbit, the launch of the SpaceX rocket went perfectly.

But the road to the ISS is still long, around 18 hours, according to the ESA, despite an average speed of 26,000 km / h, because the trajectory is obviously not in a straight line, but spirals away from the Earth to approach the International Space Station, via very precise trajectories calculated in advance.