Cape Canaveral, Florida: Astronauts aboard the International Space Station opened the hatch and floated inside a Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon capsule yesterday, the first privately owned spaceship to reach the orbital outpost, Nasa said.
Running ahead of schedule, station commander Oleg Kononenko and flight engineer Don Pettit opened the hatch to Dragon just before 6am EDT (1000 GMT), Nasa mission commentator Josh Byerly reported from Mission Control in Houston.
The bell-shaped capsule, which was making its second test flight, arrived at the space station on Friday.
The crew wore protective masks and goggles, but the interior of Dragon, which is 10 cubic metres, about the size of a large walk-in closet, proved clean.
‘Smells like a new car'
"There was no sign of any kind of (debris) floating around," Pettit radioed to Mission Control.
"It kind of reminds me of the cargo capability that I could put in the back of my pickup truck. And the smell inside smells like a brand new car," Pettit added.
Dragon carries about 544 kg of food and other supplies for the station, all non-essential items because Nasa and Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, did not know beforehand if it would actually make it to the station.
Following Tuesday's launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, Dragon had to demonstrate that it could be commanded and controlled by operators on the ground as well as by the orbiting space station crew.
Dragon and SpaceX mission control in Hawthorne, California, aced two days of precision flying and systems tests, clearing the way for Dragon to fly within reach of the station's 17.7 meter robot arm on Friday.
"You made history today and it firmly locked us into place and locked the future direction of the American space program in place," Nasa administrator Charlie Bolden radioed to the crew later on Friday.
Nasa's use of commercial spaceships to fly cargo — and eventually astronauts — to and from the station will "revolutionize the way we carry out space exploration," Bolden added.
