‘We are ready to launch': NASA, SpaceX making final preparations ahead of historic launch from Kennedy Space Center

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA and SpaceX are proceeding toward a historic launch to the International Space Station from Kennedy Space Center.

The companies are one step closer to launching the first crewed flight to the ISS from U.S. soil in nearly a decade.

On Friday afternoon, teams conducted a static fire test on the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on their mission.

Read: 9 things to know about NASA’s 1st manned rocket launch in 9 years

After a successful flight readiness review, officials said there is a lot of work to get done.

“There are no significant open issues. I am happy to report it was a very, very clean review. There’s just the plan forward work to get done. There’s quite a bit of it between now and launch, but we are ready to launch on Wednesday, May 27, at 4:33 p.m.,” said Steve Jurczyk, NASA associate administrator.

At 4:33 p.m. Friday, teams performed a critical static fire test for the Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the Crew Dragon and Behnken and Hurley on their demonstration mission to the space station.

“Tomorrow is the dry dress. That’ll kind of be the dress rehearsal launch day and then Sunday and Monday we have plenty of events as we work our way toward the launch on Wednesday,” Hurley said.

The Demo-2 mission will also be the first crewed commercial flight to the space station ever.

“We’re not done. You know, we talked a few weeks ago about we got to do this right, and we got to launch Bob and Dough. We got to make sure they’re taken care of on orbit and we got to make sure they get them home,” said Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program.

On Monday, there will be a final flight readiness review ahead of Wednesday’s launch.

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