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 Working from inside the station’s windowed cupola module, flight
engineer Alexander Gerst, a European Space Agency astronaut, used
the station’s 58-foot-long (18m) robotic arm to pluck the Dragon
capsule from orbit at 6:52 a.m. EDT as the ships sailed 262 miles
(422 km) over the Pacific Ocean.
“This was, indeed, a great flight of Dragon,” Gerst radioed to NASA
Mission Control in Houston. “We're happy to have a new vehicle on
board.”
The capsule blasted off on Sunday from Cape Canaveral Air Force
Station in Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, which is built and
flown by privately owned SpaceX, as the company is known. Including
a 2012 test flight, Dragon cargo ships have now flown to the station
five times.
The capsule is loaded with more than 5,000 pounds (2,268 kgs) of
food, supplies and science gear, including an experimental 3-D
printer designed to work in the zero-gravity environment of space
and 20 mice that will be subjects in medical experiments to assess
bone and muscle loss during long-duration spaceflights.
Dragon’s unpressurized trunk compartment holds a $26 million
instrument called RapidScat that will be robotically attached to the
outside of the station to measure wind speeds over the oceans.
California-based SpaceX, which is owned and operated by technology
entrepreneur Elon Musk, is one of two companies NASA hired to fly
cargo to the station after the space shuttles were retired in 2011.
SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract for the work, which covers 12
flights.
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Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp runs a second U.S. supply line
to the station under a $1.9 billon contract. Its next flight is
scheduled for Oct. 21.
SpaceX last week won a second, $2.6 billion NASA contract to upgrade
the Dragon capsules to fly astronauts. A test flight is targeted for
2016.
The U.S. space agency also awarded a $4.2 billion contract to Boeing
to develop a second space taxi that launches aboard pricy United
Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rockets. United Launch Alliance is a
partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
(Editing by Bill Trott)
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