A new astronaut capsule, which launched on Saturday from Florida on a Falcon rocket, has successfully guided itself into the International Space Station using computers and sensors.
Astronauts on board ISS have now been inside the capsule.
The Dragon SpaceX demonstration flight vehicle will stay docked until 8 March when it will detach and drop to Earth.
It will have to come through its descent unscathed so that Nasa can approve its readiness to carry people, which could happen as early as July.
The launch, from the same launch pad that sent Apollo 9 into orbit almost exactly 50 years ago, occurred on schedule at 07:49 UTC on 2 March. The demonstration mission, dubbed Demo-1, carried only a spacesuited instrumented mannequin named “Ripley” and a micro-gravity indicator in the form of a cuddly planet Earth.
While no humans were aboard this time, the spacecraft is nearasdammit the same as the one that will launch a crew later this year, assuming the flight (and the subsequent abort test) don’t throw up any unexpected nasties.
The lift-off itself followed the usual Falcon 9 model of launch, land, repeat. The first stage ignited on time at 07:49 UTC, and the 9 Merlin engines carried the stack past the tower, resplendent in fresh black cladding. A far cry from the red structure of the Shuttle and Apollo eras.
The engines cut off as scheduled at the 02:35 mark and the first stage returned to the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You, which is stationed in the Atlantic. The landing marked the 35th successful return for the SpaceX gang. The Crew Dragon separated from the second stage 11 minutes after launch to begin a day-long chase of the ISS prior to SpaceX’s first crack at an autonomous docking.
Prior Dragon freighters (and HTV and the former Orbital ATK – now Northrop Grumman – Cygnus spacecraft) have all been berthed by the ISS crew with the aid of the Canadarm2. Russian spacecraft and ESA’s ATV, of course, dispense with such frippery
