SpaceX Dragon Cargo Ship Docks at Space Station

An unmanned commercial space capsule packed with precious cargo successfully linked up with the International Space Station early Sunday (March 3), making a flawless orbital delivery after overcoming a thruster glitch that delayed its arrival by a day.

The SpaceX-builtDragon cargo capsule docked with the space stationat 8:56 a.m. EST (1356) as the two spacecraft soared 253 miles (407 kilometers) over the Arabian Sea. NASA flight controllers performed the orbital link-up remotely by commanding the space station's Canadian-built robotic arm, which had latched onto Dragon three hours earlier, to attach the capsule to an available docking port.

"The Dragon is ours! Maneuvering it now on Canadarm2 to a docking port, will open hatches once secure," station astronaut Chris Hadfield of Canada wrote in a Twitter post. "Look forward to new smells. Great!" [See photos of the Dragon's space station arrival]

Dragon reached the space station at 5:31 a.m. EST (1031 GMT), a full hour ahead of schedule. Two NASA astronauts, station commander Kevin Ford and flight engineer Thomas Marshburn, used the station's arm to grapple the capsule as it approached close to the orbiting lab.

SpaceX (short for Space Exploration Technologies) launched the Dragon capsule toward the space station on Friday (March 1), with the spacecraft riding the company's Falcon 9 rocket into orbit. While the launch was smooth, theDragon capsule ran into troubleafter it separated from the Falcon 9 rocket when three of four thruster pods did not activate as planned.

After several hours of troubleshooting, SpaceX engineers isolated the glitch to a pressurization problem in the thruster system and devised a fix that solved the problem. Because of the time needed for the fix, the Dragon capsule missed its initial rendezvous slated for Saturday (March 2).

The spacecraft's arrival on Sunday, however, went extremely smoothly. About four hours after the capsule was berthed to space station, astronauts opened the hatches between the two spacecraft to enter the Dragon, NASA officials said.

"Happy Berth Day, Dragon," SpaceX officials wrote in a Twitter post. The same message was emblazoned on the company's website.

"In solving the issues facing Dragon post-insertion, the team at SpaceX exhibited the ingenious engineering tenacity that has become a NASA hallmark, and further demonstrated the industry's readiness to perform the critical task of cargo delivery to low Earth orbit," Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former NASA astronaut and station commander who is now president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said in a statement. "Congratulations to SpaceX and NASA for the successful berthing of Dragon this morning; I look forward to seeing Dragon back on Earth."

Precious cargo for space station

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SpaceX Dragon Cargo Ship Docks at Space Station