 |
| SpaceX Falcon 9 and Dragon Capsule lift off Oct.7 (local time) [Photo Credit: NASA ] |
Washington: SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket carrying its
Dragon spacecraft blasted off Sunday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in
Florida at 8:35 p.m. EDT Sunday, beginning NASA's first contracted cargo
delivery flight, designated SpaceX CRS-1, to the International Space Station.
Under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services
contract, SpaceX will fly at least 12 cargo missions to the space station
through 2016. The contract is worth $1.6 billion.
The SpaceX craft, carrying around 1,000
pounds (455 kilogrammes) of supplies, took off as scheduled at 8:35 pm (0035
GMT) and is set to reach the orbiting space lab on Wednesday.
It is scheduled to return to Earth -- splashing down off the coast of southern
California -- on October 28, carrying about 734 pounds (333 kilogrammes) of
scientific materials.
While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop and advance these
commercial spaceflight capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion
spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift
rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration.
Designed to be flexible for launching
spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence
beyond low Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration in the solar
system.