The historic first docking of a docking of a commercial spacecraft at the International Space Station orbiting above Earth is on track this morning, as SpaceX’s Dragon capsule approaches. .
NASA is webcasting, and we’re embedding its feed in this post (our apologies if you’re on a device that doesn’t support the player). If all goes as planned, sometime after 8 a.m. ET the crew aboard the space station will use a robotic arm to grab the capsule. Docking would take place several hours later.
According to NASA, so far things are “going smoothly.” Dragon has been performing a series of tests as it nears the space station. By 7 a.m. ET, it was within about 700 feet of the station.
We’ll update this post as the story develops.
Earlier this week on All Things Considered, NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce reported about the historic mission. If the SpaceX craft does indeed dock and deliver the supplies it is carrying, the company will have done something that only government space agencies have done before — and will kick off what’s expected to be a new era of commercial space flight.