Astronauts from Turkey, Sweden and Italy launch to space station on latest chartered flight

SpaceX has launched Turkey's first astronaut along with a Swede and Italian to the International Space Station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Turkey’s first astronaut along with a Swede and Italian launched Thursday to the International Space Station on a chartered SpaceX flight.

The Falcon rocket blasted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in late afternoon, carrying the three men, all with military pilot experience and representing their homelands. Their escort on the trip: A retired NASA astronaut who now works for the company that arranged the private flight.

Their capsule should reach the space station on Saturday. They will spend two weeks performing experiments, chatting up schoolchildren and soaking in the views of Earth, before returning home.

It's costing each of the three countries $55 million or more. That's the rough per-person price for the trip, the third such journey organized by the Houston company Axiom Space with NASA and SpaceX. Russia has been welcoming paid visitors to the space station for more than two decades; NASA didn't until two years ago.

Turkey’s Alper Gezeravci, a former fighter pilot and captain for Turkish Airlines, is the first person from his country to rocket to space. He noted Turkey just celebrated its 100th anniversary, and, until now, the nation's view of the sky has been limited to "that we could see with our bare eyes.”