14 DAY TRIAL // This amazing video, which NASA released on Friday, shows the Dragon spacecraft approaching the International Space Station, before its history-making docking with the orbital lab. For nearly 15 minutes, you can see the sheer awesomeness that makes up space docking.
Dragon was built by the Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX), under a $1.6 billion contract with the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. SpaceX needs to complete 12 resupply flights under this contract.
The current mission launched from the SLC-40 facility at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), in Florida, on Tuesday, May 22. It was grappled by the Canadarm-2 robotic arm on Friday, and then attached to the American docking port on the Harmony module.
Dragon is proof that NASA made the right call when it decided to entrust the future of America's access to low-Earth orbit to a private corporation. Under the COTS program, the space agency is funding a number of companies to develop spacecraft similar to SpaceX's.