"Splashdown at 11:42 am EDT (1542 GMT)!" California-based private company SpaceXannounced through its Twitter account. " Welcome home Dragon!"The cone-shaped vessel drifted out of cloudy skies and settled gently in the water roughly 550miles southwest of California's coast. Outside the designated landing area, there was a waitingbarge equipped with a crane, accompanied by other recovery vessels.
US space agency NASA's mission control said the splashdown was "pretty much right ontarget," and the recovery vessels were headed toward the spot.
"Congratulations to the teams at SpaceX and NASA who worked hard to make this firstcommercial mission to the International Space Station an overwhelming success," NASAAdministrator Charles Bolden said. "This successful splashdown and the many otherachievements of this mission herald a new era in US commercial spaceflight."
"American innovation and inspiration have once again shown their great strength in the designand operation of a new generation of vehicles to carry cargo to our laboratory in space,"Bolden said.
Dragon is packed with over 1,300 pounds of cargo for the return trip, including crew items,completed science experiments and used station hardware. It will be taken to a SpaceXprocessing facility in Texas, and unloaded and inspected. SpaceX plans to deliver some high-value experiments back to NASA within 48 hours of splashdown, with the rest of the cargo to besent to the space agency within two weeks.
In the future, Dragon will abandon the water landing technique and instead settle down on alaunching pad with the assistance of directional thrusters.
Dragon docked at the space station on Friday, three days after blasting off atop a SpaceXFalcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The mission is a trial run for SpaceX's plan tofly 12 cargo-delivery missions to the orbiting laboratory over the next few years. The companyhas a $1.6 billion contract with NASA.
Dragon's journey to the space station was SpaceX's second demonstration mission underNASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Program, which providesinvestments to stimulate the commercial space industry in America.
In the next several weeks, NASA will evaluate the Dragon capsule's mission performance toclose out remaining COTS milestones. Once that work is completed, NASA and SpaceX will setthe target date for the company's first full cargo mission to the space station.
A second commercial freighter, built by Orbital Sciences Corp, is expected to debut this year.Orbital also has a contract to deliver space station cargo valued at $1.9.
Before Dragon's liftoff, flights to the space station have always been a government-only affair.
Until their retirement last summer, US space shuttles carried most of the gear and many of theastronauts to the orbiting outpost. Since then, American astronauts have had to rely onRussian capsules for rides. European, Japanese and Russian supply ships have beendelivering cargo.
NASA is looking to the private sector, in this post-shuttle era, to get American astronautslaunching again from US soil. It will be at least four to five years before SpaceX or any otherprivate operator is capable of flying astronauts.
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