The Irish Times - Wednesday, May 23, 2012

AN UNMANNED rocket owned by privately held Space Exploration Technologies blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station yesterday for a mission designed to be the first commercial flight to the International Space Station.

The 54m tall Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3.44am from a refurbished launch pad just south of where Nasa launched its now-retired space shuttles. Less than 10 minutes later, the rocket delivered its cargo a Dragon capsule with 544kg of supplies for the station crew into orbit.

Feels like a giant weight just came off my back, company founder and chief executive Elon Musk posted on Twitter after Dragon deployed its solar panels, the first of several key milestones that must be met before the spacecraft is cleared to dock at the station.

Every launch into space is a thrilling event, but this one is especially exciting because it represents the potential of a new era in American spaceflight, John Holdren, President Barack Obamas chief science adviser, said in a statement.

Nasa is counting on companies like Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to take over the task of flying cargo and eventually astronauts to the $100 billion space station, which orbits about 390km above Earth.

Currently, Nasa is dependent on Russia to fly crew to the station, at a cost of more than $60 million per person. Russia, Europe and Japan also fly cargo to the station. If its test flight is successful, SpaceX would become the first private company to reach the space station, a microgravity research complex for biological, materials, fluid physics and other science experiments and technology demonstrations.

SpaceX and a second company, Orbital Sciences Corp, already hold contracts worth a combined $3.5 billion to fly cargo to the station. SpaceX also is among four firms vying to build space taxis to fly astronauts, tourists and non-Nasa researchers.

Separately, Nasa contributed nearly $400 million to SpaceXs $1.2 billion commercial space programme, which includes development and up to three test flights of Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules. An analysis by the US government accountability office shows that a similar programme under traditional Nasa procurement would have cost four to 10 times as much, said Nasas Alan Lindenmoyer, who manages the agencys commercial spaceflight initiatives.

Yesterdays launch followed a last-second cutoff of Falcons planned liftoff on Saturday.

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First commercial flight to space station launched