Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Reuters Published Friday, May. 25, 2012 10:41AM EDT Last updated Saturday, May. 26, 2012 2:33PM EDT

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured Space Exploration Technologies Dragon cargo ship and guided it into a berth on Friday, docking the first privately owned vehicle to reach the orbital outpost.

Using the stations 17.7-metre robotic crane, NASA astronaut Don Pettit snared Dragon at 9:56 a.m. EDT as the two spacecraft zoomed 400 kilometres over northwest Australia at 28,164 kilometres per hour.

It looks like weve got us a dragon by the tail, Mr. Pettit radioed to NASA Mission Control in Houston.

The capsule, built and operated by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is the first of two new commercial freighters NASA will use to fly cargo to the $100-billion outpost following the retirement of the space shuttles last year.

The United States plans to buy commercial flight services for its astronauts as well, breaking Russias monopoly on flying crews to the station.

Dragon blasted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Tuesday. The space station crew anchored it into the stations Harmony connecting node around noon on Friday.

After a successful pass by the station on Thursday to test its navigation and communications systems, Dragon proceeded at a snails pace on Friday, stopping, starting and occasionally retreating to make sure it could be controlled.

At one point, the SpaceX ground operations team in Hawthorne, California, halted Dragon to adjust the capsules laser imaging system, which it uses to see the station. Sensors were picking up stray reflections from the stations Japanese module, said NASA mission commentator Josh Byerly.

Dragon ended up using just one of its two laser imaging systems for the final approach to the station, a bit dicey because a failure would have triggered an automatic abort.

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First privately owned capsule docks at International Space Station