SpaceX will send its first full crew of astronauts to space on Saturday. Watch it live.

• SpaceX is expected to launch four astronauts on the International Space Station on Saturday at 7:49 PM ET.

• Called Crew-1, it is SpaceX’s first full mission for NASA.

• Here’s how to watch the rocket launch live.

• Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.

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SpaceX has fixed its Crew Dragon spaceship on top of a Falcon 9 rocket and the launch system is ready to come to life. On Saturday, the company will send a crew of four NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.

The mission, named Crew-1, will be SpaceX’s first full mission for NASA, the first of six that Elon Musk’s rocket company has entered into with the space agency. The launch will also mark the true start of NASA’s commercial spaceflight program, a milestone of nearly 10 years of work.

The launch is scheduled for 7:49 PM ET on Saturday, from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, as well as Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, will be aboard the Crew Dragon space capsule. The spacecraft is expected to dock at the International Space Station approximately eight and a half hours after launch.

So the team is expected to stay on the ISS for six months, making their mission the longest human spaceflight ever launched from the United States.

“We are ready for this launch. We are ready for the six months of work that are waiting for us aboard the International Space Station, and we are ready for the return, ”NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins, who commands the mission, told reporters Monday in a call.

Watch the Crew-1 launch live

If the weather is good this weekend and all goes smoothly during pre-launch checks, nine Merlin engines will lift the Falcon 9 rocket – with the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft on top – off the launch pad on Saturday. Once the rocket’s first stage booster has burned most of the fuel, it will fall and land on a drone ship. The second stage of the rocket will continue, helping propel the ship into orbit and towards the ISS.

NASA plans to broadcast the launch and docking live via NASA TV. The crew should arrive at the launch pad shortly before 5pm ET. You can watch via embedded video stream below.

The Crew Dragon is expected to dock with the ISS starting at approximately 4:20 am ET.

Here’s the full timeline of Saturday’s launch events

Pre lunch:

• 16:54:49 – The crew arrives at the launch pad

• 17:14:49 – The crew begins to board

• 17:29:49 – Communication check

• 17:35:49 – Suit leaks check

• 17:54:49 – Door closing

To launch:

• 19:14:49 – Rocket fuel loading begins

• 19:42:49 – The Falcon 9’s engine cools down before launch

• 19:44:49 – Transitions of the dragon to internal power

• 19:48:49 – The command flight computer begins the final preliminary checks

• 7:49:04 PM – SpaceX Launch Director verifies launch

• 7:49:46 PM – The motor controller starts the motor ignition sequence

• 19:49:49 – Take off

Post-launch:

• 19:50:47 – Max Q (moment of maximum mechanical stress on the rocket)

• 19:52:26 – The main engines shut down

• 19:52:29 – The first and second phases separate

• 19:52:37 – Second stage engine fires, pushing Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon into low Earth orbit

• 19:57:18 – The entrance of the first stage rocket burns in the upper atmosphere

• 19:58:39 – Second stage engine shuts down

• 19:58:48 – The entrance of the first stage rocket burns in the lower atmosphere

• 19:59:18 – The first stage rocket lands

• 8:01:52 PM – The Crew Dragon capsule separates from the second stage

• 8:02:37 PM – Open sequence for Crew Dragon protective bow cone begins (bow cone will eventually detach from ship)

‘The next era in human space flight’

Although Crew-1 will be SpaceX’s first full mission, the company launched people into orbit earlier this year. In May, SpaceX took NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS for a demonstration mission called Demo-2.

After a smooth launch and docking, the astronauts stayed on the space station for 63 days. Then they took a fiery plunge into Earth’s atmosphere in the Crew Dragon before splashing into the Gulf of Mexico.

“We felt like we were inside an animal,” Behnken said of the 17,500 mph dive.

Prior to that mission, astronauts had not flown into space from US soil since 2011, when NASA ended its Space Shuttle program. In 2010, the agency began funding the Commercial Crew Program, a competition between private companies intended to spur a new commercial spaceflight industry. The government has spent over $ 6 billion on Commercial Crew inception, according to The Planetary Society.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine hailed Demo-2 as proof of the success of the commercial crew program.

“This is the next era in human space flight, where NASA becomes the customer,” Bridenstine said in August.

Dave Mosher and Morgan McFall-Johnsen contributed to the reports.

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