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| May 31, 2012 | First commercial spacecraft released for space station | | Washington: US company SpaceX's unmanned Dragon capsule,
the first commercial spacecraft to visit the International Space Station, was
released from the orbital outpost Thursday morning. Using the station's robotic
arm, astronauts aboard the station detached the capsule from its berthing port
at 4:07 a.m. EDT (0807 GMT) and released it at 5:49 EDT (0949 GMT) as the spacecraft
sailed 250 miles above Earth. Dragon is expected to splashdown in the Pacific
Ocean nearly 500 nautical miles (926 km) southwest of Los Angeles at 11:44 a.m.
EDT (1544 GMT). It is carrying about 1,300 pounds of cargo, including crew items,
completed science experiments and used station hardware. Dragon docked at the
space station Friday, three days after blasting off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
from Cape Canaveral in Florida . The mission is a trial run for SpaceX's plan
to fly 12 cargo-delivery missions to the orbiting laboratory over the next few
years. The company has a 1.6-billion-U.S. dollar contract with NASA. All previous
flights to the space station have been by government-operated craft.
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