Today, at 9:03 am EDT, SpaceX's Dragon capsule successfully docked with the International Space Station. The delivery is the first contracted resupply mission by the company under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract.
Space station crew members Aki Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Sunita Williams of NASA used the ISS's robotic arm to capture Dragon just before 6 am, as the station orbited 250 miles above the Pacific Ocean, just west of Baja California.
And with that began "a new era of exploration for the United States," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden put it this morning, noting that contracts with private firms like SpaceX will allow the agency to concentrate "deep space human missions back around the moon, to an asteroid and eventually to Mars."
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