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ISS Robotic Arm Captures Dragon Capsule

Posted by Unknown on from the capitalists-...-in-space! dept.

puddingebola writes "From the aricle, 'The SpaceX Dragon capsule has been successfully grabbed by the International Space Station, marking the first time a private American space flight has run a supply mission to the orbiting platform. The crew of the ISS snatched Dragon out of orbit ahead of schedule, using the space station's robotic arm to guide the capsule in after its careful approach.' NASA has also posted video of the docking."

5 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Video of the capture by 2phar · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wcknJwgzh4

    1. Re:Video of the capture by Teancum · · Score: 4, Informative

      There is a reason it looks like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

      That movie was based upon reality due to the fact that the director, Stanley Kubrick, wanted to portray something realistic considering that there were real spacecraft going to real places (like the Moon) at the time he was making and released the film. Most other "science fiction" movies gloss over this reality in a horrible way. The only time you get something action packed is when something goes horribly wrong... and perhaps at launch when huge amounts of energy are being released.

      Then again do you enjoy watching videos of your father parking his car in the driveway?

  2. Re:Second? by Tx · · Score: 4, Informative

    I seem to be wrong, according to wikipedia, there was demo flight in May, my memory ain't what it used to be. I guess since that is classed as a test rather than a supply mission, hence the "first" in TFA.

    --
    Oh no... it's the future.
  3. Second docking but first contracted supply mission by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 5, Informative

    Right, in May they demonstrated docking to the Space Station, but it wasn't a supply mission, it was a launch and docking demonstration flight. That first flight did carry some miscellaneous stuff and some student experiments, but it wasn't carrying supplies critical to station operation.

    As the summary says, this was the first actual contracted supply mission.

    --
    http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  4. Re:We need space exploration by any method possibl by beltsbear · · Score: 4, Informative

    A single lightning strike has about 5 billion joules of energy or enough to run an entire household for a month not just one bulb.