SpaceX delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, following up a historic liftoff with an equally smooth docking in yet another first for Elon Musk's company.
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. -- SpaceX delivered two astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Sunday, following up a historic liftoff with an equally smooth docking in yet another first for Elon Musk's company.
It was the first time a privately built and owned spacecraft carried astronauts to the orbiting lab in its nearly 20 years. NASA considers this the opening volley in a business revolution encircling Earth and eventually stretching to the moon and Mars. The docking occurred a little early, barely 19 hours after a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off Saturday afternoon from Kennedy Space Center, the nation's first astronaut launch to orbit from home soil in nearly a decade.
Gleaming white in the sunlight, the Dragon was easily visible from a few miles out, its nose cone open and exposing its docking hook as well as a blinking light. The capsule loomed ever larger on live NASA TV as it closed the gap. "It's been a real honour to be just a small part of this nine-year endeavour since the last time a United States spaceship has docked with the International Space Station," Hurley said. He was the pilot of that last spaceship, shuttle Atlantis in July 2011.
NASA has yet to decide how long Hurley and Behnken will spend at the space station, somewhere between one and four months. While they're there, the Dragon test pilots will join NASA's Cassidy and two Russian station residents in performing experiments and possibly spacewalks to install fresh station batteries.
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