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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – SpaceX's new crew capsule arrived on Sunday at the International Space Station, taking a second step in just over a day.
Nobody was aboard the Dragon capsule launched Saturday for his first test flight, only an instrumented mannequin. But the three astronauts had seats in the front row when the sleek white ship docked neatly and became the first American-made spacecraft designed for the crew to climb in eight years.
The TV cameras on Dragon and the space station offered a breathtaking view of each other throughout the meeting.
If the six-day demo goes well, SpaceX could launch two astronauts this summer as part of NASA's commercial crew program. The two astronauts – Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken – were at SpaceX Mission Control in Southern California, watching all the action. They rushed from Florida after watching the Dragon rocket in orbit Saturday morning from the Kennedy Space Center of NASA.
"Just super excited to see him," said Behnken a few minutes after the match. "Another milestone that prepares us for our upcoming flight here."
While SpaceX has sent a lot of cargo dragons to the space station, the Dragon crew is a different beast. It docked autonomously under the watchful eye of the astronauts, instead of relying on the robotic arm of the station for docking. Behnken stated that it should work as expected when he and Hurley are on board; they can press a button or two and will have the opportunity to intervene, if necessary.
As part of Sunday's shakedown, the station's astronauts ordered the Dragon to retreat and then move forward before the capsule was finally closed.
SpaceX employees at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, applauded and applauded the crew, Dragon, who stopped and docked at the orbital lab, nearly 400 km above the Pacific, north of New Zealand. They applauded again a few minutes later, when the Dragon's locks were secure.
The station's astronauts congratulated SpaceX as they prepared to open the hatches and collect the hidden supplies aboard Dragon. The isolated passenger of the capsule – a manikin wearing a SpaceX white space suit – would also be welcomed on board. The test dummy – or Smarty as SpaceX likes to call it, given all the instrumentation – bears the name of Ripley, the name of the main character in the sci-fi movies "Alien" .
Dragon will stay at the space station until Friday, when he will disarm and aim for a landing in the Atlantic, a few hundred miles from the Florida coast.
Like Ripley, the capsule is equipped with sensors to measure noise, vibration and stress, as well as to monitor life support, propulsion and other critical systems throughout the flight.
SpaceX aims to launch Behnken and Hurley in July.
The next step should be Boeing, NASA's other commercial crew supplier. Boeing plans to launch its unmanned Starliner capsule in April and possibly with a crew in August.
NASA is contributing $ 8 billion to the two private companies for the construction and operation of the astronaut pods to and from the space station. Astronauts have been stuck in Russian rockets since the end of NASA's space shuttle program in 2011. Russian Soyuz seats cost $ 82 million each.
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