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President Trump to travel to Florida for historic astronaut launch

In this image provided by NASA, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard is seen on the launch pad at Launch Complex 39A during a brief static fire test ahead of NASA's SpaceX Demo-2 mission, Friday, May 22, 2020, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Bill Ingalls/NASA via AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (WESH) — President Donald Trump will be in attendance on Wednesday when NASA and SpaceX launch astronauts from American soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

A White House officials tells WESH 2 News that Trump will travel to Central Florida to view the launch at Kennedy Space Center.

“Our destiny, beyond the Earth, is not only a matter of national identity, but a matter of national security,” Trump said.

For the first time in the history of human spaceflight, a private company is running the show. The curtain rises next Wednesday with the scheduled liftoff of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon crew capsule, with two NASA astronauts bound for the International Space Station.

The drama will unfold at the exact spot at Kennedy Space Center in Florida where men flew to the moon and the last space shuttle soared.

The mission is expected to take place at 4:33 p.m. on Wednesday, May 27 according to SpaceX’s Twitter page.

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