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Dragon capsule makes history with space station landing

PayPal's Elon Musk successfully docks his space capsule at the International Space Station

Technology trends and news by Krystal Peak
May 25, 2012 | Comments
Short URL: http://vator.tv/n/2709

 

For those of you that thought the only dragons in the news were the Game of Thrones variety, this update is for you.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule is now being touted as a success as it arrived into the International Space station this morning. SpaceX is a space transport company, founded in 2002, headquartered in Hawthorne, California has made it, sucessfully, out of this world.

Founded by former PayPal entrepreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX made history today as the only privately-bankrolled ship to make a commercial delivery in orbit and land at the International Space Station.

The Dragon will remain at the space station for about a week and will be send home next Thursday packed full of experiments.

NASA has been looking to the private sector for routine orbital flights to and, at the moment, SpaceX is leading space business.


The milestone excited SpaceX’s operations center as well as NASA officials.

Today, the crew at the Space Station will unload nearly 1,000 pounds of consumables and clothing, then start loading 1,300 pounds of experiments and other cargo to return to Earth.

Up to this point, the Station has been relying on Russian, Japanese and European cargo ships ever since the shuttles retired. None of those, however, were outfitted to return to Earth with content -- they simply delivered items and burned up in atmosphere.

Musk has more milestones in mind that he would like to break, including transporting people via his Dragon fleet in just a few years. Who knew that PayPal dollars could be so astronomical? Elon did, I suppose. 

 


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