Riding atop a fuel cell filled with a million pounds of liquid kerosene, SpaceX launched 21 Starlink communications satellites on a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 6:45 p.

The four-person Polaris Dawn mission launched aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule early Tuesday morning (Sept. 10). Later that day, the astronauts got farther from Earth — 870 miles (1,400.7 kilometers) — than any crewed mission since the Apollo era.