SpaceX Commercial Dragon Makes ISS Cargo Delivery

On Sunday, April 20, 2014, the Expedition 39 crew aboard the International Space Station welcomed nearly two-and-a-half tons of supplies and scientific payloads to the station with the arrival of the third SpaceX Dragon commercial cargo spacecraft.
This image of SpaceX Dragon grappled by Canadarm2 was sent down by Flight Engineer Steve Swanson to Instagram with the message, “We have a Dragon. All is good.”

With Dragon securely in the grasp of Canadarm2, the robotics officer at Mission Control remotely operated the arm to install the capsule to its port on the Earth-facing side of the Harmony module.

Once Dragon was in place, Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio monitored the Common Berthing Mechanism operations for first and second stage capture of the cargo ship, assuring that the vehicle was securely attached to the station with a hard mate. Second stage capture was completed at 10:06 a.m. EDT as the station flew 260 miles above Brazil.

Image Credit: NASA Larger image