SpaceX

The first-of-its-kind mission will head to the asteroid Dimorphos in the Didymos system and test kinetic impactors to see if an asteroid’s trajectory can be altered.

Here's everything you need to know about NASA's mission to deflect asteroids.

The astronaut team arriving on Thursday was officially designated "Crew 3" - the third full-fledged "operational" crew that NASA and SpaceX have flown together to the space station.

Operating autonomously, the spacecraft began its departure with a 90-minute fly-around of the space station as the crew snapped a series of survey photographs of the orbiting outpost.

The astronauts boarding the Endeavour's return flight will have to use diapers on their return flight due to a broken toilet.

SpaceX supplied the spacecraft, launched it from Florida and flew it from the company's suburban Los Angeles headquarters.

The quartet of amateur astronauts, led by the American founder and chief executive of financial services firm Shift4 Payments Inc, Jared Isaacman, lifted off just before sunset.

A successful flight could spawn a new era of commercial space tourism, with several firms vying for wealthy customers to pay a small fortune to experience the exhilaration of supersonic travel.

Isaacson compared Musk to Jobs in a Yahoo Finance interview a few months ago, saying, "in some ways, he's the Steve Jobs of our time."