HAWTHORNE, California -- SpaceX's Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean in full view of waiting cameras Sunday afternoon to end a successful supply mission to the International Space Station. Spashdown was at 2:22 p.m. CDT about 250 miles off the coast of Baja California, Mexico.As I have stated before, I think there is much to be said for allowing America's space flight program to be a venture based on strategic collaboration between private enterprise and NASA. Small steps forward are still good steps in the right direction. Here's hoping anyway.
The plan was for SpaceX to offload frozen science samples in Los Angeles, then ship the Dragon to the company's test facility in McGregor, Texas for processing. The rest of the capsule's cargo will be offloaded in Texas.
The Dragon's flight marked the first scheduled resupply of the station by a commercial contractor. The mission went off without any hitches from NASA's perspective, although one engine on the Falcon 9 booster rocket was shut down during launch. That led to a lower-than-planned deployment of a commercial satellite. SpaceX is still analyzing the engine issue.
One neat aside about this particular mission is that - albeit from a great distance - we got to see the launch of the Falcon 9 rocket that put Dragon into orbit. On October 7, the night of the launch, my family and I were sitting at the Rose & Crown Pub in Epcot at Walt Disney World having dinner and waiting for the fireworks show. From some 75 miles away, we could see this:
We watched as that bright point of light lifted up over the horizon until it disappeared from view behind some residual cloud cover. Obviously, I'd like to go see a launch from considerably closer range, but we enjoyed some excitement in getting to see what we did.
Neat stuff.
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