The Crew Dragon capsule successfully docked with the International Space Station 27 hours after launching into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Florida's Space Coast.
ADVERTISEMENTSpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) this morning (March 3) at 10:51 GMT about 27 hours after launching into orbit on its maiden flight from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"Congratulations to all the teams on a successful docking," NASA astronaut Anne McClain radioed Mission Control from aboard the space station.
Applause broke out at SpaceX's control centre in Hawthorne, California, as Crew Dragon, and its 'astronaut dummy' Ripley, secured itself to the station with a set of hooks and latches.
NASA astronaut Bob Behnken, who will fly on Demo-2 -- the first Crew Dragon mission to carry humans -- later this year, watched the docking from mission control.
Although the docking is a major milestone for human space flight, the Crew Dragon - and Ripley- are not home free yet as the most difficult part of the journey may be re-entry.
"Actually, hypersonic re-entry is probably my greatest concern," said SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
Musk also said the revised backshell performs very well in SpaceX's re-entry computer simulations but has yet to be proven in flight.