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SpaceX Dragon arrives at space station

James Dean
FLORIDA TODAY

SpaceX's Dragon cargo ship safely reached the International Space Station this morning, two days after blasting off from Cape Canaveral.

Astronauts steering a 58-foot robotic arm snared the Dragon and its nearly 5,000 pounds of cargo at 6:52 a.m. EDT, slightly ahead of schedule.

"This was indeed a great flight of the Dragon towards the station, and we're happy to have a new vehicle on board," German astronaut Alexander Gerst radioed to mission controllers in Houston and SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.

He said the three-person station crew -- to be joined Thursday by three more astronauts -- looked forward to moving "a lot of science out of this vehicle into our ISS and performing a lot of science in the next month."

NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman supported Gerst during the grapple operation. They'll proceed to attach the Dragon to a docking port later this morning before opening its hatch and beginning to unload cargo.

The cargo includes rodent habitats holding 20 mice, the first 3-D printer in space, food and spacesuit batteries. The spacecraft's unpressurized trunk holds a radar instrument that will measure ocean surface winds to improve weather and climate forecasts, which will be installed robotically.

The Dragon is expected to remain berthed at the outpost for a month before returning to Earth with 3,300 pounds of cargo. It is the only spacecraft flying today that is capable of returning large amounts of cargo to the ground.

This is the fourth of 12 planned Dragon flights under a $1.6 billion NASA resupply contract.

"All of the rendezvous activities went very smoothly this morning," said NASA TV commentator Kyle Herring.