The Dragon capsule undocked from the orbiting lab early Friday. Six hours later, the capsule carrying a test dummy parachuted into the ocean, a couple hundred miles off the Florida coast.
It will spend five days docked to the orbiting outpost, before making a retro-style splashdown in the Atlantic next Friday — all vital training for the next space demo, possibly this summer, when two astronauts strap in.
After much delays, NASA has given the green light to Elon Musk-owned SpaceX's Crew Dragon to launch its first unmanned test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) on March 2, the US space agency said.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted that development of Starship will continue in Hawthorne, but prototypes will be built in south Texas.
The commercial cargo vessel will bring home a variety of critical space research, including ISS hardware to extracted for analysis, refurbishment or discarding, NASA said.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched India’s first privately built satellite ExseedSat-1 along with 63 other satellites recently.
The Dragon capsule pulled up at the orbiting lab three days after launching from Cape Canaveral. Commander Alexander Gerst used the space station’s big robotic arm to grab the cargo carrier, as the two craft soared 250 miles above the Pacific.
Besides delivering supplies and hardwares, the Dragon will also deliver science experiments including the Robotic Refuelling Mission 3 (RRM3) and the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI).
The Falcon 9 carried to orbit 64 spacecraft, in particular 15 Micro satellites and 49 cubesats, from 34 different organisations from 17 countries.
Elon Musk said there's "70 per cent chance that he will go to Mars", despite a "good chance" of him not surviving either on his way or after landing.
As part of the preparation, the space agency will first shoot out a test flight on January 7.
Instead of upgrading Falcon 9 for more reusability, SpaceX was now focusing on "accelerating BFR (Big Falcon Rocket)".
Elon Musk-founded private spaceflight company SpaceX on Sunday successfully landed the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on land after delivering an Argentinian earth-observation satellite from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The photos will be sent as part of the "Launch Your Photo into Deep Space Orbit" reward on SpaceX rockets.
It is the first crewed mission by the US since the retirement of the space shuttle in 2011. NASA astronauts currently use Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and its contract is set to expire in November 2019.
Maezawa said he wants his guests for the lunar orbit "to see the moon up close, and the Earth in full view, and create work to reflect their experience."
The tourist will fly in the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) being designed to carry people into deep space, the Elon Musk led company said in a tweet.
The spacecraft lifted off on a Falcon 9 rocket on June 29 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The spacecraft is expected to reach the International Space Station on July 2.
The satellite is one of the world's first attempts to tackle the build-up of dangerous space debris orbiting the Earth.
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