SpaceX launches unmanned US capsule

The SpaceX company has launched a capsule from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida designed to carry people.

The mission is unscrewed for this flight, but if it goes well, the American space agency is likely to approve the system for regular astronaut use from later this year.

The successful launch puts SpaceX one step closer to a historic landmark: Crew Dragon could be the first commercially built spacecraft to carry NASA astronauts to orbit. And Crew Dragon — along with a capsule called Starliner built by Boeing — could end the United States' decade-long reliance on Russia for human spaceflight.

SpaceX's capsule is now en route to the International Space Station, which flies about 254 miles above Earth at tremendous speeds: about 10 times faster than a bullet.

Crew Dragon is carrying a dummy named Ripley, named for the "Alien" protagonist, instead of people. And it will dock with the orbiting laboratory on Sunday to drop off about 400 pounds of supplies before it flies back home five days later.

This marks the first and only demo mission that Crew Dragon will fly without humans on board. If all goes well, the capsule design will undergo a few more reviews and safety checks, and it could be ready to fly two NASA astronauts to the space station in July, based on the space agency's current timeline.

Not since the retirement of the shuttles in 2011 has the US been able to put humans in orbit.

SpaceX and Boeing (BA) have contracts worth up to $2.6 billion and $4.2 billion, respectively.

Both projects have been beleaguered with delays, and NASA and its oversight regulators have raised safety concerns that will have to be resolved before humans set foot on either spacecraft.

Meanwhile, NASA has paid Russia about $80 million per seat to send US astronauts to space aboard Soyuz rockets — a fact that isn't very popular in the halls of Congress.

SpaceX's first crewed mission, which will fly NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, could happen by July, according to NASA's most recent schedule.

Boeing's Starliner is slated to fly its first demo mission without a crew no earlier than April.