“Glad to be back in space,” Kimbrough radioed once the capsule was safely in orbit. “Just spectacular,” said NASA’s acting administrator Steve Jurczyk.A masked Musk met briefly with the astronauts at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center before they boarded white gull-winged Teslas from his electric car company. The astronauts’ spouses and children huddled around the cars for one last “love you” before the caravan pulled away and headed to the pad in the predawn darkness. “From now on, I’ll see you on a screen!” tweeted Pesquet’s partner, Anne Mottet. Despite the early hour, spectators lined surrounding roads to watch the Falcon take flight an hour before sunrise. Liftoff was delayed a day to take advantage of better weather along the East Coast in case of a launch abort and emergency splashdown.