SpaceX Dragon Capsule docking with International Space Station

ActionNewsJax.com ^ | May 25 2012 | AP

[iowamark]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- A privately bankrolled spacecraft is getting ever closer to the International Space Station for a historic docking today.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule contains a half-ton of supplies. The station's crew will use a robot arm to snare the Dragon.

On Thursday, the unmanned capsule came within 1½ miles of the space station in a practice fly-by. Early Friday, it returned to the neighborhood...

[GRRRRR]

Capture now being pushed out until 1040h EST...

They are going nice and slowly...don’t want to see any “OOOPS” moments...

[kidd]

Now holding at 200 meters
Waiting for a window for a closer approach
Cannot grapple the spacecraft in the dark

[kidd]

Dragon now at 30 meter hold point

[JRandomFreeper]

7000 pressurized and 7000 unpressurized cargo. Not a bad potential payload. And the extended trunk should increase the unpressurized cargo mass. I haven't seen any numbers on the extended trunk yet.

/johnny

[JRandomFreeper]

No bumps would be good. A Soyuz bumped MIR and that was a nightmare for all involved.

/johnny

[iowamark]

“FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2012 1333 GMT (9:33 a.m. EDT)
Mission control reports it will take another 20 minutes for Dragon to reach the capture point below the space station.

FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2012 1329 GMT (9:29 a.m. EDT)
Dragon is now firing thrusters to nudge it closer to the space station. Its next destination is a hold point just 10 meters, or 32 feet, from the 450-ton orbiting outpost.”

[kidd]

Inching towards the 10 meter point. Be there in 8 minutes.
External lights turned on.
May try a night capture

[kidd]

Go for capture given

[GRRRRR]

Mission Control has given “GO FOR CAPTURE”
Dragon just 10 meters away.
The Canadian build robot arm will now reach up and snare the Dragon!

They are in ‘night time’ over Australia

[GRRRRR]

Robot arm now moving...come here my little pretty!!

[catbertz]

thanks for the link!

[GRRRRR]

GOT IT!!!

Amazing.

[JRandomFreeper]

LOL! "Got a Dragon by the tail".

/johnny

[houeto]

Did he say, “Now let’s turn it around and do it for real.”? My ears aren’t the best.

[iowamark]

“Looks like this sim went really well,” Pettit joked. “We’re ready to turn it around and do it for real.”

[iowamark]

Looks like NASA tv is time delayed by 5 or 6 minutes.

[JRandomFreeper]

Where are you getting the time diff? I had my ZULU clock up and it matched pretty close to what they were saying.

/johnny

[iowamark]

The video at:

http://spaceflightnow.com/falcon9/003/status.html

ran several minutes ahead of:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

[JRandomFreeper]

Weird. Video streaming can do things like that. I wonder if NASA has a delay policy.

Of course, it could be that Space-X has better equipment and bandwidth than NASA does, too. ;)

/johnny

[houeto]

“Looks like this sim went really well,” Pettit joked. “We’re ready to turn it around and do it for real.”

Thanks iowamark. That's a classic!