Dragon makes history with space station docking

This image provided by NASA-TV shows the SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo craft after Dragon was grappled by the Canadarm2 robotic arm and connected to the International Space Station, Friday, May 25, 2012. Dragon is scheduled to spend about a week docked with the station before returning to Earth on May 31 for retrieval.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- The private company SpaceX made history Friday with the docking of its Dragon capsule to the International Space Station, the most impressive feat yet in turning routine spaceflight over to the commercial sector.

It marked the first time a business enterprise delivered a supply ship to the space station.

"There's so much that could have gone wrong and it went right," said an elated Elon Musk, the young, driven billionaire behind SpaceX.

"This really is, I think, going to be recognized as a significantly historical step forward in space travel - and hopefully the first of many to come."

SpaceX still has to get its Dragon back next week with a load of science gear; the retro bell-shaped capsule is designed to splash down into the ocean, in the style of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. But Friday was the crucial step, Musk noted, and NASA agreed the next SpaceX mission could come as early as September.

After a three-day flight from Cape Canaveral, the Dragon closed in on the space station as two control centers - NASA in Houston and SpaceX in Hawthorne, Calif. - worked in tandem. A problem with the capsule laser-tracking system prompted SpaceX controllers to order a temporary retreat, but the problem quickly was resolved.

NASA astronaut Donald Pettit used the space station's 58-foot robot arm to snare the gleaming white Dragon as the two craft soared 250 miles above Australia, a day after a practice fly-by.

"Looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail," Pettit announced once he locked onto Dragon's docking mechanism.

NASA's dressed-up controllers applauded. In contrast, their SpaceX counterparts - including Musk - lifted their arms in triumph and jumped out of their seats to exchange high fives.

The company's youthful-looking employees - the average age is 30 - were still in a frenzy when Musk took part in a televised news conference a couple hours later. They screamed with excitement as if it were a pep rally and chanted, "E-lon, E-lon, E-lon," as the 40-year-old Musk, wearing a black athletic jacket with the SpaceX logo, described the day's events.

Alcohol was banned from the premises during the crucial flight operation, Musk noted, "but now that things are good, I think we'll probably have a bit of champagne and have some fun." The crowd roared in approval.

Although cargo hauls have become routine, Friday's linkup was significant in that an individual company pulled it off. That chore was previously reserved for a small, elite group of government agencies.

Not only that, the reusable SpaceX Dragon is designed to safely return items, a huge benefit that disappeared with NASA's space shuttles. It is the first U.S. craft to visit the station since the final shuttle flight last summer.

"I think you know it, but you made history today," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden told the space station astronauts and everyone else involved in Friday's docking. "It was an effort that will revolutionize the way we carry out space exploration."

NASA provided seed money for SpaceX - $381 million going into Tuesday's launch, a small portion of the more than $1 billion that the company has invested in the effort.

Two hours after the capture, the crew attached the Dragon to the space station as the congratulations poured in.

"Everyone who is working to push forward the space frontier recognizes that such a mission is a massive challenge, and I join the world in lauding this important accomplishment," said Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic, a space tourism company that is holding a seat for Musk aboard its SpaceShipTwo.

"Nearly 43 years after we first walked on the moon, we have taken another step in demonstrating continued American leadership in space," said Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin, the second man to step onto the moon.

The capsule- 19 feet tall and 12 feet across - is carrying 1,000 pounds of supplies on this unprecedented test flight. The crew starts unpacking Saturday and will have just under a week to unload the food, clothes and other contents.

After this test flight, SpaceX - officially known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. - has a contract to make a dozen delivery runs. It is one of several companies vying for NASA's cargo business and a chance to launch Americans from U.S. soil.

Rival Orbital Sciences Corp. is shooting for its own supply run by year's end.

President Barack Obama is pushing commercial ventures in orbit so NASA can concentrate on grander destinations like asteroids and Mars. Obama's chief scientific adviser, John Holdren, called Friday's linkup "an achievement of historic scientific and technological significance."

"It's essential we maintain such competition and fully support this burgeoning and capable industry to get U.S. astronauts back on American launch vehicles as soon as possible," Holdren said in a statement.

Without the shuttle, NASA astronauts must go through Russia, an expensive and embarrassing situation for the U.S. after a half-century of orbital self-sufficiency. Once companies master supply runs, they hope to tackle astronaut ferry runs.

Musk, who founded SpaceX a decade ago and helped create PayPal, said he can have astronauts riding his Dragon capsules to orbit in three or four years. He also runs the electric car company Tesla Motors.

The space station has been relying on Russian, Japanese and European cargo ships for supplies ever since the shuttles retired. None of those, however, can bring anything of value back; they're simply loaded with trash and burn up in the atmosphere.

The space station's six-man crew will release the Dragon on Thursday after filling it with science experiments and equipment. It will aim for the Pacific Ocean just off the California coast.

"At the beginning of the launch, I said there were a thousand things that had to go right," said Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA's commercial crew and cargo program. "Well, there still are several hundred left. But I am very confident we'll get through it. ... Today this really is the beginning of a new era in commercial spaceflight"

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Commercial rocket will fly to the space station

A halo forms around the top of the SpaceX Falcon 9 test rocket

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- For the first time, a private company will launch a rocket to the International Space Station, sending it on a grocery run this weekend that could be the shape of things to come for America's space program.

If this unmanned flight and others like it succeed, commercial spacecraft could be ferrying astronauts to the orbiting outpost within five years.

It's a transition that has been in the works since the middle of the last decade, when President George W. Bush decided to retire the space shuttle and devote more of NASA's energies to venturing deeper into space.

Saturday's flight by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is "a thoroughly exciting moment in the history of spaceflight, but is just the beginning of a new way of doing business for NASA," said President Barack Obama's chief science adviser, John Holdren.

By handing off space station launches to private business, "NASA is freeing itself up to focus on exploring beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in 40 years."

California-based Space Exploration, or SpaceX, is the first of several companies hoping to take over the space station delivery business for the U.S. The company's billionaire mastermind, Elon Musk, puts the odds of success in his favor while acknowledging the chance for mishaps.

NASA likewise cautions: This is only a test.

"We need to be careful not to assume that the success or failure of commercial spaceflight is going to hang in the balance of this single flight," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager. "Demo flights don't always go as planned."

Once it nears the space station after a two-day flight, the SpaceX capsule, called Dragon, will spend a day of practice maneuvers before NASA signals it to move in for a linkup. Then its cargo - a half-ton of food and other pantry items, all nonessential, in case the flight goes awry - will be unloaded.

Up to now, flights to the space station have always been a government-only affair.

Until their retirement last summer, shuttles carried most of the gear and many of the astronauts to the orbiting outpost. Since then, American astronauts have had to rely on Russian capsules for rides. European, Japanese and Russian supply ships have been delivering cargo.

It will be at least four to five years before SpaceX or any other private operator is capable of flying astronauts. That gap infuriates many. Some members of Congress want to cut government funding to the private space venture and reduce the number of rival companies to save money and speed things up.

The shift to private enterprise, while revolutionary in space, has a long history in the U.S. The Internet, for example, evolved from government work. Space station astronaut Donald Pettit points to the settling of the American West: The government ran the forts, and private enterprise built the railroads.

In this instance, NASA employees are still working closely with the commercial contenders, giving advice and attending company meetings.

"I see this whole story repeating itself again and again as we move from low-Earth orbit," Pettit said. "And it will probably repeat itself when we go to the moon and elsewhere."

No one is rooting more for SpaceX than NASA. The space agency has poured $381 million into the SpaceX effort, while the company has spent $1 billion over its 10-year lifetime, said Musk, the high-tech pioneer who co-founded PayPal and Tesla Motors, the electric car company.

NASA also gave $266 million to a second company it hired to make supply runs. Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. hopes to launch its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule from Wallops Island, Va., by year's end.

"This is the start of a real new era," said Dutch spaceman Andre Kuipers, who will help Pettit snare the Dragon and pull it to the space station with a robotic arm.

Pettit agreed the upcoming Dragon flight is a "big deal," but added: "I hope this becomes so routine that people won't even pay attention to it anymore."

SpaceX will have only a split second, at 4:55 a.m. Saturday, to shoot its Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule skyward. (All spacecraft bound for the space station these days have instantaneous launch windows in order to sync up efficiently with the orbiting outpost.)

SpaceX already has achieved what no other commercial entity has done: It launched a spacecraft into orbit and brought it back intact in a 2010 test flight that ended with the capsule splashing down in the Pacific.

But getting to the space station is twice as hard, said Musk, who is not only CEO but chief designer. A Dragon capsule has never before attempted a rendezvous and docking in orbit - an exquisitely delicate operation, with the risk of a collision that could prove ruinous for the space station, which has six men on board.

If something goes wrong, "we'll fix the problem and be back at it," Musk said. Two more SpaceX delivery trips are planned for this year.

The bell-shaped Dragon capsule is 19 feet tall and 12 feet across. What sets it apart from other capsules is that it can bring back space station experiments and old equipment, as the shuttles did. None of the Russian, European and Japanese supply ships do that - they burn up when they return to Earth. The Russian Soyuz vehicles that ferry astronauts have little room to spare.

The Dragon will be cut loose from the space station about two weeks after arriving and aim for a Pacific splashdown off the California coast.

Other U.S. companies vying for a shot at launching space station astronauts - like Sierra Nevada Corp., which is designing the mini-shuttle Dream Chaser - are cheering on SpaceX since it is the first one out of NASA's post-shuttle, commercial gate.

Former space shuttle commander Steven Lindsey, director of flight operations for Sierra Nevada in Colorado, said: "It's a new way of doing business, and there's a lot of debate back and forth on whether it's going to be successful - or whether it can be successful."

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