Astronauts aboard the International Space Station captured Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon cargo ship and guided it into a berth on Friday, docking the first privately owned vehicle to reach the orbital outpost. Using the station's 58-foot long (17.7-meter) robotic crane, NASA astronaut Don Pettit snared Dragon at 9:56 am EDT (1356 GMT) as the two spacecraft zoomed 250 miles (400 km) over north-west Australia at 17,500 miles (28,164 km) per hour.
"It looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail," Pettit radioed to NASA Mission Control in Houston. The capsule, built and operated by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, is the first of two new commercial freighters NASA will use to fly cargo to the $100 billion outpost following the retirement of the space shuttles last year.
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