Safe docking with space station for historic Spacex shuttle mission

The new Spacex ‘Dragon’ capsule has docked smoothly with the International Space Station in a big step toward putting the US back in the business of launching astronauts.

The white Dragon capsule, developed by Elon Musk’s company under contract to Nasa, closed in on the orbiting station nearly 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean and, flying autonomously, linked up on its own, without the help of the robotic arm normally used to guide spacecraft into position.

Dragon is the first American-made spacecraft capable of carrying a crew to pull up to the space station in eight years.

This first rocket had only a dummy pilot, nicknamed ‘Ripley’ after Sigourney Weaver’s character in the Alien films, but if this six-day test flight goes well, Spacex could launch two Nasa astronauts to the orbiting outpost this summer.

“A new generation of space flight starts now with the arrival of (at) Spacex’s Crew Dragon to the (at)space-station,” Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted. “Congratulations to all for this historic achievement getting us closer to flying American astronauts on American rockets.”

Since Nasa retired the space shuttle in 2011, the US has been getting people and supplies to and from the space station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Dragon will remain at the space station until Friday, when it will undock for an old-school, “Right Stuff ”-style splashdown in the Atlantic, a few hundred miles off Florida.

“It should be fine, but that’ll be a thing to make sure it works on re-entry,” said Mr Musk.