Top Technology the Astronauts Successfully Docked to the ISS Ship Dragon

Mission Control Centre (Korolev, Moscow Region), May 25 - Astronauts Don Pettit and Andre Cowper has successfully docked with the International Space Station, the first ever commercial spacecraft Dragon. Up to this point came to the station only to "state" ships - Russian, American, European and Japanese.

Dragon was docked to the Harmony module using the Canadarm robot arm to 2.20 Moscow time - at this point have worked all 16 fixtures, which are tightly connect the spacecraft to the station.

 NASA Ship Dragon, captured by the ISS manipulator Canadarm

During the approach to the ISS aboard the ship fails with an infrared camera and laser system, LIDAR, which are designed for navigation and control of the device relative to the station. Therefore, during the convergence of the ship made several unscheduled stops, and the actual docking occurred about two hours later than planned.

Hatches ship is expected to be open on Saturday. Dragon delivered to the station about 500 pounds of cargo - it is "optional" items, without which the crew can easily manage.

The cargo compartment of the first "private traders" - several boxes of equipment for experiments with fluids produced by students in an open competition. The structure of this equipment includes ice cubes to cool the samples. On board will be delivered to laptops, batteries and food - 117 standard meals for astronauts wear.

As planned, Dragon will be docked to the station until May 31, after which the ship's descent capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean, bringing several hundred kilograms of cargo to Earth.

Dragon, developed by U.S. company SpaceX, became the first private space truck that went to the ISS.

SpaceX has spent on the development of the ship for four years - in December 2010, he made the first flight into orbit and safe splashdown in the Pacific. Thus, SpaceX became the first private company that brought the ship into space and successfully restored it to the earth - that had managed just three countries - the U.S., Russia and China.

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Latest Technology MCC Increased the Height of the Orbit of the ISS for 1.5 Miles

Mission Control Center (MCC) has completed an operation to increase the average altitude of the flight of the International Space Station (ISS), told Novosti representative of the MCC.

"The two main engines of European cargo spacecraft ATV-3" Edoardo Amaldi ", docked to the station, were included in the 04.10 GMT. Under the program, they have worked 377.4 seconds (about six and a half minutes). As a result, the average height of the orbit maneuver the ISS increased by 1.5 kilometers and reached 399.3 kilometers "- the spokesman said.

He said the purpose of the operation was to create a working orbit station to provide the necessary conditions for landing manned spacecraft "Soyuz TMA-03M", scheduled for July 1, as well as the flight "Soyuz TMA-05M" with the crew of a new expedition to the International Space Station, scheduled for launch in July 15.

On the "Soyuz TMA-03M" to the Earth from the station to return to the cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Space Agency, Astronaut of the European Space Agency (ESA) Andre Cowper and NASA astronaut Donald Pettit.

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