Space: Dragon's Hatches Opened By International Space Station Crew. Opens new era.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

Space: Dragon's Hatches Opened By International Space Station Crew. Opens new era.

The hatch between the newly arrived SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and the Harmony module of the International Space Station was opened by NASA Astronaut Don Pettit at 5:53 am EDT as the station flew 253 miles above Auckland, New Zealand. The hatch opening begins four days of operations to upload more than 1,000 pounds of cargo from the first commercial spacecraft to visit the space station and reload it with experiments and cargo for a return trip to Earth. It is scheduled for splashdown several hundred miles west of California on May 31.

Wearing protective masks and goggles, as is customary for the opening of a hatch to any newly arrived vehicle at the station, Pettit entered the Dragon with Station Commander Oleg Kononenko. The goggles and masks will be removed once the station atmosphere has had a chance to mix air with the air inside the Dragon itself.

The SpaceX rocket, short for Space Exploration Technologies, delivered the Dragon capsule containing provisions for six crewmembers on the ISS. This is the first time a private enterprise has launched a rocket to deliver cargo.  It  marked the beginning of a space enterprise.

“Flight controllers applauded when the Dragon reached orbit nine minutes into the flight,” wrote the Associated Press.