SpaceX recently conducted a successful test of one of its Falcon 9 rockets at the Rocket Development and Test Facility in McGregor, Texas. (Photo : Getty Images)
SpaceX Falcon Rocket took off from Cape Canaveral Monday morning to deliver a dragon capsule to International Space Station (ISS). The capsule has more than two tons of supplies for the astronauts and gears to improve the station. The Falcon was able to land successfully back to Florida.
The Dragon capsule is expected to reach the ISS on Wednesday morning. It has the astronaut's regular supplies and some experiments. It is also carrying an important hardware called the International Docking Adapter or IDA. The adapter will allow the spacecraft from different nations to dock with the station as reported by the WMFE, Central Florida's public radio station.
"The Dragon is doing fine," said Joel Montalbano, deputy program manager for space station utilization, NASA. "We're looking for a grapple Wednesday morning, in Eastern time, at about 7 a.m. (1100 GMT)," he added.
NASA said that the new IDA's systems and targets are more sophisticated compared to old docking systems. The new one has lasers and sensors allowing the station and the spacecraft to communicate digitally to enable automatic alignment and connection and to share distance cues.
"The docking adapter is another step forward to enabling the commercial crew vehicles," Montalbo said.
It is one of the biggest external parts that is going to be added to the ISS since 2011 during the retirement of the space shuttle and a large-scale assembly of the outpost ended.
Astronaut Jeff Williams will be controlling the station's robotic arm to grab the Dragon capsule and the ground controllers will move the arm to set the cargo craft on the side of the Harmony module's Earth-facing side.
Meanwhile, as part of their plan to make the rocket reusable, the SpaceX landed the first stage of the booster at their Cape Canaveral landing site. The Central Florida heard a sonic boom as the booster re-entered. It was their second attempt to deliver an IDA, the first one failed due to an explosion after the liftoff.
The launch to deliver the supplies to the ISS is a part of around $3 billion contract between the SpaceX and NASA. It also provided a key customer based for the Dragon Vehicles and Falcon 9, Space Flight Now reported.
