Nasa poised to return to crewed spaceflight with SpaceX capsule launch

Public-private partnership with Elon Musk's company to send four astronauts to international space station on Saturday

In a rocket ship perfectly named for the year of a global pandemic, three American astronauts and one from Japan are scheduled to blast off from Florida on Saturday evening as Nasa finally returns to the business of routine crewed spaceflight.

The 7.49pm launch of the SpaceX capsule Resilience from the Kennedy Space Center, a mission officially designated as Crew 1, will be the first time since the final flights of the space shuttle fleet in 2011 that the US space agency has its own operational rotating program of sending humans to the international space station.