12:53 PM PT -- Falcon 9 is back on the ground after landing on a remote droneship, with the Crew Dragon capsule flying freely into Earth's orbit now. By all measures, Demo-2 has been a resounding and historical success.
12:27 PM PT -- The Falcon 9 rocket ship is in the AIR and on its way to the ISS, following a successful launch that seemed to go off without a hitch!!! Now, only something like 48 hours (give or take a day) left to go ...
12:14 PM PT -- President Trump has just arrived at the launch.
Elon Musk and co. are officially ready for round 2 of takeoff, just days after calling off their monumental space mission ... and TMZ is streaming the event live.
A couple of NASA astronauts are set to be launched into orbit Saturday via SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and accompanying the Crew Dragon capsule, which will be blasting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission has been dubbed, Demo-2.
Of course, Saturday's mission was supposed to go down Wednesday -- but it got pushed back due to bad weather ... something the space team there didn't wanna toy with and risk. Now, they're running it back with a predicted 50/50 chance of acceptable conditions.
The team is sending these astronauts to the International Space Station -- 250 miles or so above the Earth. This would mark the first spaceflight launched from U.S. soil in just under a decade. The point of the mission is to see if we're able to taxi astronauts to and from the ISS and Earth -- something Elon's rocketship proved to be capable of a few years ago when SpaceX first secured a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA and passed some tests.
Looks like the two American astronauts being sent up there -- Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken -- are already suited up and aboard the spacecraft. SpaceX says all systems are a go (for now) ... and everything seems primed for an actual launch -- barring any unforeseen mishaps (like an explosion at the launchpad or a lightning storm or something).
Originally Published -- 11:53 AM PT
Stay tuned ...