Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX launched four astronauts on a flight to the International Space Station on Sunday, NASA's first full-fledged mission sending a crew into orbit aboard a privately owned spacecraft.

3:52:05 SpaceX's newly designed Crew Dragon capsule, which the crew has dubbed Resilience, lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:27 p.m. eastern time from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"That was one heck of a ride," astronaut Mike Hopkins said from Crew Dragon to SpaceX mission control about an hour after liftoff. "There was a lot of smiles."

Crew Dragon will gradually raise its orbit over approximately 27 hours through a series of onboard thruster firings, aiming to dock at the International Space Station at 11 p.m. eastern time on Monday.

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