Jun 14, 2012
Florida, May 22, 2012.
On May 31 2012, SpaceX successfully completed the historic mission that made Dragon the first commercial spacecraft in history to visit the International Space Station. Previously only four governments — the United States, Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency — had achieved this challenging technical feat.
SpaceX has successfully launched a supply vehicle and docked with the ISS. This is big news because it’s the first time in History a private company has been able to pull off, what used to take entire nations to achieve.
We are officially in the future! And it’s about time. I don’t want to hear Neil DeGrass Tyson complain about American space funding anymore. Finally we have the beginnings of an industry that promises not only to take our species off world, but it means we can do it without the need for military backing. It’s all commerce, baby.
The spaceX ship consists of the main launch vessel called the Falcon and the payload delivery capsule called the Dragon.
The great thing about the Dragon Capsule that was used to ferry the supplies, is that it’s reusable. The other Japanese and European capsules just burn up on re-entry, but SpaceX has a budget to stick to. Less waste, more profit… This means that the ISS can start offloading old experiments and equipment, since they can now have all that valuable science stuff splash down comfortably into the pacific.
The launch vehicle was part of their Falcon series, and the Dragon capsule sits atop, the mighty craft.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2012/05/18/tech-spacex-private-launch-iss.html