The tricky step for the capsule will take place around 11am Irish time
The capsule is scheduled to return to Earth next Friday splashing down in the Atlantic and then return to Cape Canaveral in Florida where it was launched from.
The new capsule blasted off aboard the Falcon 9 rocket built by SpaceX - run by billionaire Elon Musk - from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral lighting up the coastline. "I'm a little emotionally exhausted, because that was super stressful but it worked, so far," Mr Musk told a late-night press conference an hour later.The mission aims to test the vessel's reliability and safety in real-life conditions.
"Today represents a new era in space flight" said Jim Bridenstine, head of the US space agency who sees the launch as a step toward the privatisation of low Earth orbit. It pays Russia to get its people up to the ISS orbiting research facility at a cost of $82m per head for a round trip.But the program has suffered delays as safety requirements are much more stringent for manned flights than for unmanned missions to deploy satellites.
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