Following Saturday’s beautiful launch of the Falcon 9 and two days of rendezvous maneuvers the SpaceX Dragon vehicle arrived at the ISS early this morning. This is the sixth time that Dragon has visited the station, once under the COTS development program and five times under the cargo resupply contract (CRS) awarded to SpaceX.
The spacecraft was grappled by Astronaut Butch Wilmore at 5:54am EST using the station arm, mission control then maneuvered the spacecraft into position to allow the berthing process to be completed, the sixteen bolts were then fastened to create a hard link between the two. The hatches may be opened later today and the spacecraft it due to stay at the station for the next 29 days before being leave to return critical items back to Earth on 2/10.
Among the 5000+ pounds of cargo delivered by Dragon are Christmas presents and fresh groceries for the crew to enjoy.
The images below were captured from the NASA TV broadcast of the events
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