Plans are in the works for private companies to begin shipping cargo to the station, and eventually to carry astronauts as well.
Inside the Dragon is 1, 673 pounds of cargo from the station to be delivered to NASA as part of the contract between the space agency and the commercial space company.
We also reached a critically important milestone in May when SpaceX became the first private company to send a spacecraft -- the Dragon cargo capsule -- to the International Space Station and return it with cargo intact.
Nasa hopes a second company can also soon begin operational cargo deliveries to the station.
This marks the first commercial cargo mission to the Station.
Coming after its first successful docking mission with the International Space Station, this marks the first time that a commercial spacecraft will be docking with the International Space Station with cargo.
Even if NASA cannot be persuaded to trust its astronauts to the private sector, there is a compelling case that it should offer open tenders to deliver cargo to the space station.
An official of an association representing commercial space flight contractors hailed the new strategy of government encouragement for commercial companies to develop systems for transporting astronauts and cargo to the space station.
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The Progress M-12M that went down last week was to deliver more than 3.8 tons of cargo to the space station crew, including food supplies, medical equipment, personal hygiene items and scientific equipment needed for experiments, according to Roscosmos and space officials.
We're the only craft capable of bringing significant cargo back from the space station.
The shuttle did some extraordinary work in low-orbit experiments, the International Space Station, moving cargo.
This marks the first successful cargo mission to the space station by a private company.
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In 2008, NASA awarded contracts to deliver cargo to the International Space Station to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation.
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Plus, it would rather like the private sector to offer a cheaper way of delivering cargo to the International Space Station than the deal it gets from its current overfed contractors.
SpaceX , founded by Elon Musk, an entrepreneur, hopes its Dragon capsule will start ferrying astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station next year for NASA when the agency's shuttle programme comes to an end.
With another successful launch under its belt, and assuming a successful dock on Wednesday, the success of SpaceX means that NASA is no longer solely reliant on the Russian space program to send supplies and cargo to the International Space Station.
"What's really important is not control, as much as it is the fact that the United States will once again be in the lead, will be providing our own vehicles to take our own astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, " Bolden said.
Last August, Musk landed a NASA contract that could lead to SpaceX demonstrating cargo flights to the International Space Station.
The news comes after NASA announced that Space X was fully certified to shuttle (as it were) cargo up to the permanent space station.
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Officials say it would be supplied by freighters in exactly the same way that robotic cargo ships keep the International Space Station (ISS) today stocked with fuel, food, water, air, and spare parts.
An Ariane 5 rocket has been booked to launch Europe's third ATV cargo ship to the International Space Station (ISS) on 9 March and this mission takes precedence over all other activity at Kourou.
After Columbia broke apart with the loss of seven astronauts in February, NASA grounded the orbiter fleet, forcing the United States and its international partners to rely on smaller Russian Soyuz spacecraft to deliver cargo and crews to the space station.
We have heard a lot about SpaceX and how its Falcon 9 rocket will soon be used to send cargo and astronauts to the space station, but the upstart is also after a sizeable chunk of the satellite-launch market as well.
The Augustine report now makes it more likely the government will dispense with NASA's services entirely in low Earth orbit and ask private firms to deliver crew to the station, as well as cargo.
They spent a lot of this mission--they delivered the cargo that they had to the space station, but they spent a lot of the mission just making sure that the shuttle itself was safe to fly.
After unloading the Dragon, the crew of the Space Station will reload it with new cargo for departure to Earth on October 28.
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From there, the capsule will be processed and most of its cargo delivered to NASA. This marks the first successful cargo mission to and from the International Space Station by a commercial spaceflight company.
The two space station crews, along with the four Discovery astronauts, continued unloading supplies from the Italian-built Leonardo cargo module, a shiny giant cylinder that the shuttle crew attached to the space station on Monday.
The Seahouses Lifeboat Station received a distress call from the cargo vessel Danio in the early hours of Saturday.
Musk also recounted the stressful moments around last week's launch of the unmanned Dragon cargo vessel, which linked up with the Space Station last Sunday.
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