CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida |
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon cargo ship and guided it into a berth on Friday, docking the first privately owned vehicle to reach the orbital outpost.
Using the station's 58-foot long (17.7-meter) robotic crane, NASA astronaut Don Pettit snared Dragon at 9:56 a.m. EDT (1356 GMT) as the two spacecraft zoomed 250 miles over northwest Australia at 17,500 miles per hour.
"It looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail," Pettit radioed to NASA Mission Control in Houston.
The capsule, built and operated by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is the first of two new commercial freighters NASA will use to fly cargo to the $100 billion outpost following the retirement of the space shuttles last year.
The United States plans to buy commercial flight services for its astronauts as well, breaking Russia's monopoly on flying crews to the station.
Dragon blasted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Tuesday. The space station crew anchored it into the station's Harmony connecting node around noon on Friday.
After a successful pass by the station on Thursday to test its navigation and communications systems, Dragon proceeded at a snail's pace on Friday, stopping, starting and occasionally retreating to make sure it could be controlled.
At one point, the SpaceX ground operations team in Hawthorne, California, halted Dragon to adjust the capsule's laser imaging system, which it uses to see the station. Sensors were picking up stray reflections from the station's Japanese module, said NASA mission commentator Josh Byerly.
Dragon ended up using just one of its two laser imaging systems for the final approach to the station, a bit dicey because a failure would have triggered an automatic abort.
But one eye was all Dragon needed to position itself 30 feet beneath the station and within arm's reach of the robotic crane that would haul it up for berthing.
"?Congratulations on a wonderful capture," astronaut Megan Behnken radioed to the station crew from Mission Control. "?You've made a lot of folks happy down here, over in Hawthorne and right here in Houston. Great job, guys."
SpaceX founder and chief designer Elon Musk said he got a congratulatory call from President Barack Obama after Dragon reached orbit on its second and most likely final test flight.
?"Caller ID was blocked, so at first I thought it was a telemarketer," Musk wrote in a Twitter message.
DRAGON DELIVERS
The Dragon capsule is carrying about 1,200 pounds (544 kg) of food, water, clothing and supplies for the station crew. It will be repacked with more than 1,300 pounds (590 kg) of equipment to come back to Earth and depart the station on May 31.
It would splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of southern California later that day.
Dragon's successful test flight will clear SpaceX to begin working off its 12-flight, $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly cargo to and from the station.
A second freighter being developed by Orbital Sciences Corp is expected to debut later this year. Orbital holds a second NASA cargo delivery contract worth $1.9 billion.
The Obama administration is pushing Congress to embrace similar partnership arrangement for commercial space taxis to fly astronauts as well.
Legislators last year halved Obama's request for space taxi design work to $406 million. Proposed spending plans for the year beginning October 1 would cut the White House's $830 million request to no more than $525 million.
(Reporting by Irene Klotz; Editing by Anthony Boadle)
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