"SpaceX Dragon Capsule Successfully Captured by ISS" by Chloe Albanesius, PC Magazine 5/25/2012
The SpaceX Dragon capsule was successfully captured by the International Space Station Expedition 31 crew this morning, making SpaceX the first commercial company to send a spacecraft to the ISS.
The station's robotic arm captured the Dragon at 9:56 a.m. ET after a journey that took three days, six hours, 11 minutes, and 23 seconds. At the time of capture, the ISS was 250 miles above northwest Australia and now continues over the Pacific Ocean.
The ISS crew is currently working to install the Dragon on the bottom side of the station's Harmony node.
"SpaceX has done it," NASA Mission Control in Houston announced shortly after Dragon had been captured.
"CAPTURE COMPLETE!!!" an excited SpaceX tweeted shortly thereafter.
"Looks like we caught a Dragon by the tail," Astronaut Don Pettit chimed in from the ISS.
The Dragon was originally scheduled to link up with the ISS at 9:10 a.m., but was delayed slightly while SpaceX resolved an issue with the primary navigation sensors caused by reflections from the external pallet attached to the Japanese Kibo module, NASA said.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Dragon spacecraft from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday morning at 3:44 a.m. ET.
According to NASA, Dragon is carrying about 1,200 pounds of supplies for the ISS crew - most of which is food and clothing - as well as student-designed experiments. The spacecraft can actually hold up to 7,300 pounds of supplies, but NASA and SpaceX are taking it slow and limiting the amount of cargo on this first run to only critical items.
The Dragon will remain docked at the ISS for about three weeks while cargo is unloaded. Astronauts will then remove it using the robotic arm, at which point it will return to Earth via parachutes and land in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.
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