SpaceX Dragon capsule successfully docks on ISS
The Elon Musk founded company is using the flight as a test, before it plans to put two astronauts on board later this year.
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard takes off during the Demo-1 mission, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 2, 2019.
SpaceX's new Dragon capsule successfully docked on the International Space Station on Sunday, NASA and SpaceX confirmed during a live broadcast of the mission.
"We can confirm hard capture is complete," NASA said.
The docking began at 1051 GMT, more than 400 km above the Earth's surface, north of New Zealand – and 27 hours after the capsule's launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The mission is a test launch and only has a dummy on board the capsule ahead of a manned flight scheduled for later this year.
Test flight
The Dragon capsule will spend five days docked to the orbiting outpost, before making a retro-style splashdown in the Atlantic next Friday.
The Elon Musk founded company is using the flight as a test, before it plans to put two astronauts on board later this year.
NASA recently turned to private companies, SpaceX and Boeing, and has provided them USD 8 billion (GBP 6 billion) to build and operate crew capsules to ferry astronauts to and from the space station.
Currently, Russian rockets are the only way to get astronauts to the 400-km outpost.
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