WASHINGTON: SpaceX’s new Dragon capsule successfully docked on the Inter­national Space Station on Sunday, Nasa and SpaceX confirmed during a live broadcast of the mission. “We can confirm hard capture is complete,” Nasa said.

The announcement was met with applause at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas.

The docking began at 1051 GMT, more than 248 miles above the Earth’s surface, north of New Zealand — and 27 hours after the capsule’s launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Although the contact appeared slow, the ISS and the capsule were moving at a speed of over 27,000 kilometres per hour in orbit around the Earth.

On board the ISS, the crew — American Anne McClain, Russian Oleg Kononenko, and Canadian David Saint-Jacques — were scheduled to open the airlock at 1330 GMT.

The mission is a test launch with only a dummy on board the capsule ahead of a manned flight scheduled for later this year.

The Dragon capsule will remain on the ISS until Friday before detaching to splash down in the Atlantic. It will be slowed by four parachutes, in what is the one of the mission’s riskiest stages.

The launch is a key step towards resuming manned space flights from US soil after an eight-year break.

SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has made the trip to the ISS a dozen times before since 2012, but only to refuel the station. Transporting people is a more complex task, requiring seats, a pressurized cabin with breathable air, temperature regulation and emergency infrastructure.

After its shuttle programme was shut down in July 2011 following a 30-year run, Nasa began outsourcing the logistics of its space missions.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2019