SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has homed in to the International Space Station. Launched on Saturday, the spacecraft was bang on target and managed to connect to the ISS as per schedule. The capsule is on a mission to deliver 6,000 pounds of experiments and living essentials to the station.
Phew, its amazing how much the weight adds up when you have to get everything, and I mean everything, you need to survive delivered to you right?
Meanwhile, this whole routine isn’t anything new for this particular Dragon craft, which has already performed it once. This time around, the craft was launched using a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX’s Kennedy Space Center LC-39A facility on Saturday. The rocket was of course, recovered later. The company has become an expert at recovering the rocket it sends into space and, saves tens of millions of dollars every time it achieves this feat.
Dragon has reached the orbit early on. However, it then spent around 36 hours orbiting the earth so as to get into the perfect position for the astronauts abroad the ISS to capture it with a robotic arm.
SpaceX does seem to be getting really god at recovering, refurbishing, and reusing things. First the rockets, and now the Dragon capsules as well. The company is paying so much attention to the process because this is its USP, and how it hopes to gain an edge over its competitors when its comes to being cost effective. The company hopes to recover the Dragon capsule yet again, once it makes its way into the earth’s atmosphere around one month hence.
