WASHINGTON-The unmanned Dragon capsule from the private US firm SpaceX successfully reached the International Space Station Sunday, its third trip carrying supplies and equipment to the orbiting lab.
NASA television broadcast live images of the ISS’s 17.6 meter long robotic arm as it grabbed hold of the gumdrop-shaped Dragon capsule at 11:14 GMT. ‘Capture complete, congratulations to the entire team,’ said the Japanese station commander, Koichi Wakata, who was in charge of operating the mechanical arm along with American Rick Mastracchio. Friday’s launch looked marginal for much of the day. Meteorologists had forecast only a 40% chance of favourable conditions. But despite some threatening cloud, the Falcon got away exactly on time at 15:25 local time (19:25 GMT). A camera mounted on the exterior of Dragon relayed video of the entire nine-minute ride to orbit.
Pictures also showed the freighter deploy its solar panels. Dragon must now raise its altitude to bring it into the vicinity of the space station where Nasa astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata can do their grab manoeuvre.
This particular mission has drawn interest because SpaceX again used the launch to try to advance the technology needed to recover and re-use Falcon rocket parts.
Engineers had fitted landing legs to the vehicle’s first-stage - the segment that gets the rocket up off the ground. Normally, this stage is discarded at about 80km in altitude, almost three minutes into a flight, whereupon it begins a destructive dive back through the atmosphere. Following first-stage separation on Friday, however, the lower rocket segment was commanded to relight some of its engines to slow its fall to Earth.
It was then supposed to deploy 7m-long legs to execute a soft ‘landing’ - although for this test, the attempted touch-down was actually to be done out over the Atlantic Ocean. Initial data suggested the early phase of the descent was well controlled. Further data gathered via a tracking plane will need to be studied to learn exactly how the stage performed as it made its final approach towards the water’s surface.  Chief designer at SpaceX, Elon Musk, said there was a heavy swell at the time, so it was unlikely that the stage could be recovered.
‘Even though we probably won’t get the stage back, I think we’re really starting to connect the dots of what’s needed,’ he told reporters. ‘There’s only a few more dots that need to be there to have it all work. I think we’ve got a decent chance of bringing a stage back this year, which would be wonderful.’ The goal - if all testing goes well - is to try to return a Falcon first-stage to a remote piece of land at the Cape. ‘ Both astronauts were dressed casually in polo shirts as they carried out the procedure. SpaceX has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA for a series of future supply missions. This marks the California-based company’s third commercial resupply mission and fourth visit to the ISS.