A private company successfully delivered a half-ton of supplies to the International Space Station early Wednesday, the first official shipment under a billion-dollar contract with NASA.

9:52 a.m. CDT, October 10, 2012

After a 2-1/2 day trip, Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon cargo ship positioned itself 33 feet away from the $100 billion research complex, a project of 15 countries, which has been dependent on Russian, European and Japanese freighters for supplies.

"Looks like we tamed the Dragon," commander Sunita Williams radioed to Mission Control in Houston.

"We're happy she's on board with us. Thanks to everybody at SpaceX and NASA for bringing her here to us. And the ice cream," she said.

The Dragon's cargo includes a freezer to ferry science samples back and forth between the station and Earth. For the flight up, it was packed with chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream, a rare treat for an orbiting crew.

Williams and Hoshide attached the capsule to a docking port on the station's Harmony connecting module at 9:03 a.m. EDT (1303 GMT).

It is expected to remain docked to the station for about 18 days while the crew unloads its 882 pounds (400 kg) of cargo and fills it with science experiments and equipment no longer needed on the outpost.

The flight is the first of 12 planned under a $1.6 billion contract NASA placed with privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to deliver cargo to the station.

The U.S. space agency's second supplier, Orbital Sciences Corp, plans to debut its Antares rocket later this year. A demonstration run to the station is planned for February or March.

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SpaceX cargo ship reaches International Space Station