Wednesday, April 18, 2012

First-Ever Private Spacecraft Docking Mission To Launch April 30

NASA seeks to make space history again, this time by overseeing the first-ever docking of a privately owned commercial spacecraft with the International Space Station (ISS).

The Dragon cargo vessel developed by private firm SpaceX has been tentatively cleared to launch from Cape Canaveral on April 30, 2012, and is set to rendezvous with the space station a few days thereafter, NASA’s associate administrator of space operations William H. Gerstenmaier said Monday.

The entire mission will take 21 days, at which point the Dragon cargo vessel will re-enter Earth and plunge into the Pacific Ocean, to be recovered and re-used again.

Read more

No comments:

Post a Comment