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A private company successfully delivered half a ton of supplies to the International Space Station Wednesday, the first official shipment under a billion-dollar contract with NASA.
The SpaceX cargo ship, called Dragon, eased up to the orbiting lab, and station astronauts reached out with a robot arm and snared it. Then they firmly latched it down.
The linkup occurred two and a half days after the Dragon's launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. contract with NASA. The michael kors purse sale contract calls for 12 such shipments.
This shipment includes groceries, clothes, science experiments and other gear. Williams and her crew won't get access to it until Thursday, when the hatch is opened.
The vessel will remain at the space station for nearly three weeks before departing with almost twice that much cargo at the end of the month. Dragon is the only cargo ship capable of bringing back research and other items, filling a void left by NASA's retired shuttles.
Launch glitchSpaceX - owned by PayPal's billionaire creator Elon Musk - launched Dragon aboard a Falcon 9 rocket Sunday night. One of the nine first-stage engines failed a minute into the flight, but the other engines compensated and managed to put the capsule into the proper orbit. The mishap, however, left a secondary payload aboard the rocket - an Orbcomm communication michael kors handbags uk satellite - in too low of an orbit.
This is the second Dragon to visit the space station. Last May, SpaceX conducted a test flight.
NASA is hiring out space station supply runs to American companies now that the shuttles are museum relics. The shuttle fleet was retired in 2011 after 30 years so the space agency could focus on human trips beyond low-Earth orbit; the destinations include asteroids and Mars.
Space station partners Russia, Japan and Europe also launch michael kors outlet store cargo ships, but those vessels are filled with trash and destroyed during descent. NASA scientists eagerly are awaiting nearly 500 samples of astronauts' blood and urine that have been stockpiled aboard the complex since Atlantis visited for the last time more than a year ago.
NASA's human exploration and operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier, called the returning specimens "unbelievably unique and precious" and a major reason michael kors purse outlet for going commercial in the post-shuttle era.
"There were a lot of skeptics at the beginning, michael kors purse but as evidenced today, I think you're starting to see that this can work and can move forward," Gerstenmaier said.
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