CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA and the United States are one step closer to launching astronauts from American soil after the successful launch Saturday morning of the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Crew Dragon at 2:49 a.m. Saturday from historic launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.

“Tonight was a big night for the United State of America, a great night for NASA. What today really represents is a new era in spaceflight,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

There were no humans on board this mission, named Demonstration Flight 1.

It's a test to prove to NASA that SpaceX can safely send Crew Dragon to the International Space Station and back before they put humans on board as soon as this summer.

A dummy, called Ripley—named after the character in the Alien movies—was put on Crew Dragon, equipped with sensors to give NASA a better idea of what the launch will be like for astronauts.

Crew Dragon is expected to arrive at the ISS just before 6 a.m. on Sunday.

Since there's no one on board, NASA put 400 pounds of crew supplies and experiments on board Crew Dragon.

The spacecraft will stay at the ISS until March 8 when it will then use four parachutes to splash down a couple hundred miles off the Cape Canaveral coast.

SpaceX will recover Crew Dragon with a boat so that the company and NASA can inspect it.

If this demonstration mission is successful then SpaceX will send two NASA astronauts to the ISS as early as July. July also marks 8 years since the last humans launched from Florida.

NASA contracted both SpaceX and Boeing to build spacecrafts capable of sending humans to the ISS.

Boeing's first test launch of its CST-100 Starliner on an Atlas V rocket is set for sometime next month.

SpaceX was also able to successfully recover its first stage booster on Saturday morning.

Some 10 minutes after launch, the booster landed on a drone ship hundreds of miles off our east coast.