A room in the archive
6:02 a.m., May 25, 2012. Dragon has held 72 meters below the space station for half an hour. The laser that measures the distance has been fooled by reflections. This room follows the twelve days around this minute, by the clock.
Part one: the stakes and the launch
May 19 to 22, 2012
“Our Hail Mary pass.”
The books
“This was our Hail Mary pass.”
Two test flights became one. Dragon would fly under the station, then come back and be caught. If it failed, NASA would have no cargo ship that could bring science home, and SpaceX would not be paid for cargo. A NASA manager called it “our Hail Mary pass.”
NASA had planned three test flights. The second would pass under the station; only the third would berth. In 2011 SpaceX proposed doing both on one flight, and NASA agreed.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 114 to 115“Three or four times a week, someone would come up and say, ‘I’d hate to have your job.’” With the shuttle retired, only Dragon could carry science home: “if Dragon did not work, the massive and costly station NASA built in orbit would become effectively useless for biological experiments.” For SpaceX, most of the $1.6 billion cargo contract paid only once cargo flew; “only a successful C2 would unlock this funding.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 113 to 117“I think anyone who wasn’t worried about that flight was foolish.”
The Hail Mary room tells how that contract was won, in 2008.
“Maximum pucker factor.”
“Either really happy or really sad. It’s just one of those things that has a bimodal outcome.”
“Maximum pucker factor occurs during the docking phase.”
“And we’ve probably got 30 at mission control in Hawthorne. But this is a special mission.”
Read the interviewThe night before the first attempt, Musk said he felt calm. He did not expect the launch to worry him most. He expected the last few meters to the station, three days later.
The abort.
T-2 min. SpaceX launch director and Air Force range give final approval.
Spaceflight Now, status logABORT. Engines ignite, then the flight computer cuts off the countdown 0.5 s before liftoff.
Spaceflight Now, status logSpaceX reports the cause: high chamber pressure reading on engine 5 of the first stage.
Spaceflight Now, status logLaunch aborted: slightly high combustion chamber pressure on engine 5. Will adjust limits for countdown in a few days.
See the tweetsAll nine engines lit. Half a second before release, the flight computer saw high pressure in engine 5 and shut them down. The rocket never left the pad. Shotwell, that morning: “We aborted with purpose.”
Gwynne Shotwell: “We hold the vehicle down with purpose to watch for this exact issue. Just like a pilot at the end of a runway revs the engines and looks at the gauges, we were revving the engines, we were looking at the gauges and we decided not to fly.” … “this is not a failure. We aborted with purpose.”
Watch the news conferenceLaunch.
That afternoon the engineers found a bad check valve in engine 5 and replaced it. The next chance was Tuesday.
T-2 min. Final approvals for liftoff at 12:44:38 a.m. Hawthorne time.
Spaceflight Now, status logLIFTOFF of Falcon 9 from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral.
Spaceflight Now, status log
Falcon 9 lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 3:44:38 a.m. Eastern, in a window one second long. It was the rocket’s third flight. In Hawthorne it was 12:44 a.m.
“…we launched at night, and we launched on the second.”
A launch window of one second: a day late or a second late meant the station had moved on.
DRAGON SEPARATION from the second stage.
Spaceflight Now, status logT+12 min. Solar arrays fully extended.
Spaceflight Now, status logFalcon flew perfectly!! Dragon in orbit, comm locked and solar arrays active!! Feels like a giant weight just came off my back :)
See the tweets
The sensor bay.
Dragon spaceship opens the navigation pod bay door without hesitation. So much nicer than HAL9000 :)
See the tweetsThe door covered the instruments Dragon would steer by near the station: a laser rangefinder (LIDAR) and thermal cameras. At 11:51 UTC NASA said both appeared to work.
LIDAR and thermal imager appear to work as expected.
Spaceflight Now, status logA door on Dragon’s side opened on its laser rangefinder and thermal cameras. They would measure the last few hundred meters to the station. Three days later, near the station, one of them would see too much.
Part two: the fly-under
May 24, 2012
The radio.
Musk tweets: “About 110 miles away and the spacecraft is now in direct communication with the space station.”
Spaceflight Now, status logKuipers sends the strobe-on command over UHF. Telemetry shows it went through.
Spaceflight Now, status logKuipers: Dragon is too sunlit to see the strobe. Telemetry says the test worked.
Spaceflight Now, status logDragon heard the station from 110 miles away. The link mattered: through it, the crew could order Dragon to hold, back away or abort. The first test was a light.
Holly Ridings, NASA’s flight director: “It’s the first time the crew on-board the ISS will send a command to the Dragon and get a response. … it’s leading towards the crew potentially needing to send more invasive commands, such as a hold, retreat, or even an abort later.”
Read the articleThe fly-under.
Station cameras spot Dragon as a bright dot above Earth’s limb.
Spaceflight Now, status log
Station flight control team declares the UHF commanding demo complete.
Spaceflight Now, status log
Dragon passed 2.5 km beneath the station. Pettit, in the Cupola, saw it out the window. Several of Dragon’s systems failed on the way, and backups took over each one. Everything the original second flight had to prove was now proved.
Early this morning, Dragon’s thrusters fired, bringing the vehicle 2.4 kilometers below the International Space Station.
Read the update…as it flew under the station, Dragon experienced more than half a dozen failures, including the loss of its GPS system for navigation. Each was cleared by switching to a backup.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 120The night.
Dragon has been performing well, but the most difficult aspects of the mission are still ahead.
Sometime around 6:00 AM Pacific/9:00 AM Eastern, astronauts on the space station will grapple Dragon with the space station’s robotic arm and the spacecraft will attach to the station.
Read the updateISS Mission Management Team gives “go” for integrated operations and the berthing attempt.
Spaceflight Now, status logNASA cleared Dragon to try. The plan put the capture at about six in the morning, Hawthorne time. Inside 1.5 miles of the station, the decisions passed to NASA’s flight director in Houston.
John Couluris, SpaceX’s mission director and a former Navy pilot, came back to his console that evening. Once Dragon came within 1.5 miles, the station’s flight director in Houston, Holly Ridings, had the final say.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 120Part three: the approach
May 25, 2012, 1:19 to 6:56 a.m. Hawthorne
Into the ellipsoid.
Approach initiation burn. Aim point is 350 m directly below the station, in about 45 minutes.
Spaceflight101Dragon enters the approach ellipsoid. Pettit’s monitors show it about 1,200 m below.
Spaceflight Now, status logStation cameras see Dragon against Earth. Both pass into orbital sunset south of Australia.
Spaceflight Now, status logDragon has finished its 180-degree yaw. It moves up toward the 250 m hold.
Spaceflight Now, status logDragon fired its thrusters and rose toward the station from below. From here NASA could stop it at any point, and the crew could send it away. Pettit would fly the station’s robotic arm; Kuipers would watch Dragon and give the commands.
…she gave the go for Dragon to start slowly climbing.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 120The approach player needs JavaScript. The same beats follow below, in order, with their times.
Distance to the station
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Close up
To scale. Drawn by Explorist.
The crew's photos appear here at the times they were taken.
The log
The log fills in here as the clock runs.
The approach
About four and a half hours in about five minutes at 60 times real speed, stopping at each beat. NASA TV plays at real speed.
250 meters.
At 250 meters the crew tested the two commands they might need for real: back away, and stop. Both worked. But Dragon’s two ways of measuring distance did not agree, and the controllers loosened the limit to keep going.
One of the two lasers “started to return some glitchy data.” The thermal cameras, meant to agree with the laser within 10 percent, were off by up to 20. Couluris and Ridings agreed on their private line to widen the limit.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 120200 and 150 meters.
Dragon entered the 200-meter sphere around the station that only cleared vehicles may enter. Then it stopped again at 150 meters, so the engineers could look at the thermal cameras. The capture was now an hour behind plan.
The retreat.
At 59 meters one of Dragon’s two lasers failed. SpaceX backed Dragon away before the station could order an abort. The command went out 19 seconds after the failure. Dragon stopped at 72 meters and waited.
“Then lidar two outright failed. Paul Wooster called for Dragon to retreat back to a safe distance. Couluris turned to the engineer in charge of navigation, Jeff Tooley. For critical spacecraft maneuvers both had to send a command … They issued the command, and Dragon began to back away. … Nineteen seconds had elapsed since the lidar’s failure.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 121“One of the GNC engineers made a brilliant call. … luckily he called a retreat. Because otherwise I think they would have said, ‘abort,’ and then we would have had to spend 24 hours going around and coming back.”
Thirty-five minutes at 72 meters.
The laser was seeing reflections off Japan’s module on the station. SpaceX proposed narrowing its view, a change to Dragon’s settings this close to the station. Berger writes that NASA’s flight rules forbade it. Fuel and thruster heat left little time. In Houston, flight director Holly Ridings said go.
The lasers were bouncing “not just … off dedicated reflectors on the station but also off the nearby Japanese module, Kibō, a phenomenon known as ‘dazzling.’” The fix: shrink the part of the station the laser looks at. “This involved a minor software change, however, and doing that in proximity to the station violated NASA’s flight rules. The decision was in Ridings’s court.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 121Fuel might not last for a second try the next day, and the thrusters, pulsing to hold position, were heating toward their limit. “It was excruciating watching the temperatures creep up … We really had to go, one way or the other, or the mission was done.” David Giger.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 121 to 122Ridings sat, which she never did. “Normally I just pace, pace, pace. But I was sitting, with absolute total focus.” Some of her controllers voted no-go. “She overrode the concerns of some members of her team and told Couluris to update the software.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 102, 123“…we had to send the command that we... That wasn’t part of any procedure.” … “…to segment the optical field of view to eliminate some of the reflections that we’re seeing on the on the on the Japanese module.” … “…this is burned into my memory for the rest of my life.”
His account plays while this beat is on screen: the episode from 9:28 to 13:49. Audio: It’s Not Rocket Science, Jeff Ward, October 1, 2026.
“…she knew that this was the guy that wrote the code in the first place … So she trusted him and she did a hard thing. She said, ‘Um, go, go for it.’”
“I wasn’t actually sure we were going to make it.”
| What went wrong | Who says so |
|---|---|
| Laser reflections | The record, Berger, Lipchin |
| A glint on the thermal cameras | Shotwell, NASA’s COTS history |
| Laser against GPS | Jeff Ward |
| A command | The record (SpaceX “finished its commanding”), Lipchin |
| New code | Reisman, Shotwell, Singh |
The record leads.
One laser.
With both lasers reset, Dragon moved in at less than three inches a second. Near 17 meters the second laser was dazzled again, by the docking ring, and failed. Dragon went on with one. At 6:47 a.m. it stopped ten meters below the station.
At 55 feet the second laser “started to dazzle off the docking ring. Then it failed.” “We were just sitting there sweating because we were on one lidar, and two thermal imagers. If we lose the cross-check, or we lose the lidar, it’s game over.” John Couluris.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 123“Megan sending a friendly reminder right before they grappled us that we’re only on one LIDAR.”
Go for capture.
Dragon stopped firing its thrusters and floated free. Pettit had about fifteen minutes to catch it with the station’s 58-foot arm before it drifted away. It was dark: the station was over the Indian Ocean, on the night side of the Earth.
“I was just like, really, Don, could you go any slower? … He didn’t really go slower than the simulations. But we were so close.” Kathy Lueders. Pettit had about fifteen minutes before Dragon drifted out of reach.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 123 to 124“I wasn’t going to let the future of commercial space get muffed up because of some mistake on my part, so I spent a lot of time practicing.”
Capture.
At 6:56 a.m. in Hawthorne, Don Pettit closed the station’s arm on Dragon. “Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” he radioed. No company had built a spacecraft that reached the station before.
CAPTURE COMPLETE!!! The space station’s robotic arm has grappled SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft!
Read the updateThe team had given Dragon “a 50 percent chance, at best.” Musk walked to Couluris and shook his hand. Laura Crabtree, the operations planner, “sat back in her chair and cried.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 124 to 125“…it felt like an eternity at the time, but now that I look at it, that’s the fastest grapple operation I’d ever seen.”
“I happened to be in mission control delivering breakfast burritos at the time. And I was standing next to [Gwynne]. And when Dragon docked successfully, [Gwynne] turned around and hugged me.”
He says 2013. The flight was in 2012.
Every photo and film of the morning, at its Hawthorne time. Press one to play the approach from that minute.
2:27:38 a.m.Don Pettit and André Kuipers at the robotics station in the Cupola.Photo: André Kuipers, ESA/NASA3:05:25 a.m.Dragon below the station during the retreat test.Photo: NASA, ISS031-E-0707453:29:03 a.m.Dragon below the station, at the hold.Photo: NASA, ISS031-E-0706634:52:36 a.m.Dragon over Namibia.Photo: NASA, ISS031-E-0709434:59:32 a.m.Dragon below the station, moving in toward 78 meters.Photo: NASA, ISS031-E-0710755:39:18 a.m.Dragon in an infrared view from the station, during the hold.Photo: NASA, ISS031-E-0844635:51:22 a.m.Dragon over the Rocky Mountains, during the hold.Photo: André Kuipers, ESA/NASA6:02:40 a.m.Garrett Reisman and Steve Jurvetson in SpaceX mission control, Hawthorne. The clock on the screen behind Reisman reads 13:03:01. The approach resumes that minute. The record’s page.Photo: Steve Jurvetson, May 25, 2012 (CC BY 2.0)6:05:28 a.m.In Houston, the station’s flight control room during the approach.Photo: NASA/Lauren Harnett, JSC2012-E-0542856:07:17 a.m.Dragon below the station as the approach resumes.Photo: NASA, ISS031-E-0711356:17:16 a.m.Dragon at the 30-meter hold.Photo: NASA, ISS031-E-071140
6:25 a.m.NASA TV from 13:25 UTC, Dragon at the 30 m holdNASA TV, May 25, 2012. Uploaded by Matthew Travis6:35:15 a.m.Approach to 10 meters: Dragon below the station, about to be grappled.Photo: NASA, ISS031-E-071146
6:47 a.m.NASA TV at the capture point, with the air-to-ground loopNASA TV, May 25, 2012. Uploaded by Ejinn
6:56 a.m.The arm closes on DragonVideo: Canadian Space Agency, May 25, 2012
6:56 a.m.From SpaceX’s mailing list that morning.Image: SpaceX, update of May 25, 2012
6:56 a.m.From SpaceX’s mailing list that morning.Image: SpaceX, update of May 25, 2012
6:56 a.m.From SpaceX’s mailing list that morning.Image: SpaceX, update of May 25, 2012
6:56 a.m.Hawthorne at the same secondVideo: Steve Jurvetson, SpaceX mission control, May 25, 2012
6:56:32 a.m.In Houston, the flight control team applauds the capture.Photo: NASA/Lauren Harnett, JSC2012-E-054353250 meters.
At 250 meters the crew tested the two commands they might need for real: back away, and stop. Both worked. But Dragon’s two ways of measuring distance did not agree, and the controllers loosened the limit to keep going.
One of the two lasers “started to return some glitchy data.” The thermal cameras, meant to agree with the laser within 10 percent, were off by up to 20. Couluris and Ridings agreed on their private line to widen the limit.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 120200 and 150 meters.
Dragon entered the 200-meter sphere around the station that only cleared vehicles may enter. Then it stopped again at 150 meters, so the engineers could look at the thermal cameras. The capture was now an hour behind plan.
The retreat.
At 59 meters one of Dragon’s two lasers failed. SpaceX backed Dragon away before the station could order an abort. The command went out 19 seconds after the failure. Dragon stopped at 72 meters and waited.
“Then lidar two outright failed. Paul Wooster called for Dragon to retreat back to a safe distance. Couluris turned to the engineer in charge of navigation, Jeff Tooley. For critical spacecraft maneuvers both had to send a command … They issued the command, and Dragon began to back away. … Nineteen seconds had elapsed since the lidar’s failure.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 121“One of the GNC engineers made a brilliant call. … luckily he called a retreat. Because otherwise I think they would have said, ‘abort,’ and then we would have had to spend 24 hours going around and coming back.”
Thirty-five minutes at 72 meters.
The laser was seeing reflections off Japan’s module on the station. SpaceX proposed narrowing its view, a change to Dragon’s settings this close to the station. Berger writes that NASA’s flight rules forbade it. Fuel and thruster heat left little time. In Houston, flight director Holly Ridings said go.
The lasers were bouncing “not just … off dedicated reflectors on the station but also off the nearby Japanese module, Kibō, a phenomenon known as ‘dazzling.’” The fix: shrink the part of the station the laser looks at. “This involved a minor software change, however, and doing that in proximity to the station violated NASA’s flight rules. The decision was in Ridings’s court.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 121Fuel might not last for a second try the next day, and the thrusters, pulsing to hold position, were heating toward their limit. “It was excruciating watching the temperatures creep up … We really had to go, one way or the other, or the mission was done.” David Giger.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 121 to 122Ridings sat, which she never did. “Normally I just pace, pace, pace. But I was sitting, with absolute total focus.” Some of her controllers voted no-go. “She overrode the concerns of some members of her team and told Couluris to update the software.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 102, 123“…we had to send the command that we... That wasn’t part of any procedure.” … “…to segment the optical field of view to eliminate some of the reflections that we’re seeing on the on the on the Japanese module.” … “…this is burned into my memory for the rest of my life.”
His account plays while this beat is on screen: the episode from 9:28 to 13:49. Audio: It’s Not Rocket Science, Jeff Ward, October 1, 2026.
“…she knew that this was the guy that wrote the code in the first place … So she trusted him and she did a hard thing. She said, ‘Um, go, go for it.’”
“I wasn’t actually sure we were going to make it.”
| What went wrong | Who says so |
|---|---|
| Laser reflections | The record, Berger, Lipchin |
| A glint on the thermal cameras | Shotwell, NASA’s COTS history |
| Laser against GPS | Jeff Ward |
| A command | The record (SpaceX “finished its commanding”), Lipchin |
| New code | Reisman, Shotwell, Singh |
The record leads.
One laser.
With both lasers reset, Dragon moved in at less than three inches a second. Near 17 meters the second laser was dazzled again, by the docking ring, and failed. Dragon went on with one. At 6:47 a.m. it stopped ten meters below the station.
At 55 feet the second laser “started to dazzle off the docking ring. Then it failed.” “We were just sitting there sweating because we were on one lidar, and two thermal imagers. If we lose the cross-check, or we lose the lidar, it’s game over.” John Couluris.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, p. 123“Megan sending a friendly reminder right before they grappled us that we’re only on one LIDAR.”
Go for capture.
Dragon stopped firing its thrusters and floated free. Pettit had about fifteen minutes to catch it with the station’s 58-foot arm before it drifted away. It was dark: the station was over the Indian Ocean, on the night side of the Earth.
“I was just like, really, Don, could you go any slower? … He didn’t really go slower than the simulations. But we were so close.” Kathy Lueders. Pettit had about fifteen minutes before Dragon drifted out of reach.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 123 to 124“I wasn’t going to let the future of commercial space get muffed up because of some mistake on my part, so I spent a lot of time practicing.”
Capture.
CAPTURE COMPLETE!!! The space station’s robotic arm has grappled SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft!
Read the updateAt 6:56 a.m. in Hawthorne, Don Pettit closed the station’s arm on Dragon. “Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” he radioed. No company had built a spacecraft that reached the station before.
Capture.
At 6:56 a.m. in Hawthorne, Don Pettit closed the station’s arm on Dragon. “Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” he radioed. No company had built a spacecraft that reached the station before.
CAPTURE COMPLETE!!! The space station’s robotic arm has grappled SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft!
Read the updateThe team had given Dragon “a 50 percent chance, at best.” Musk walked to Couluris and shook his hand. Laura Crabtree, the operations planner, “sat back in her chair and cried.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 124 to 125“…it felt like an eternity at the time, but now that I look at it, that’s the fastest grapple operation I’d ever seen.”
“I happened to be in mission control delivering breakfast burritos at the time. And I was standing next to [Gwynne]. And when Dragon docked successfully, [Gwynne] turned around and hugged me.”
He says 2013. The flight was in 2012.
Part four: aboard
May 25 to 30, 2012
Berthed.
Early inspection looks good. Pettit and Kuipers start moving Dragon to the install position.
Spaceflight Now, status log
Arm drives Dragon toward Harmony’s Earth-facing port.
Spaceflight Now, status log
First-stage capture complete. NASA credits Kuipers with installing the capsule.
Spaceflight Now, status logBERTHED. All 16 bolts driven. Acaba bolts Dragon to Harmony. Over the Pacific Northwest. 3 d 8 h 18 min after launch.
Spaceflight Now, status log
Kuipers moved Dragon to the station on the arm, and Joe Acaba drove the sixteen bolts. Dragon was berthed: attached by the arm, not docked under its own power. It had flown 3 days, 8 hours and 18 minutes.
“When Dragon was safely attached to the robotic arm I flew it slowly to the ISS and docked it to the bottom of Node-2, also known as Harmony.”
Explorist’s note The arm moved Dragon to the Earth-facing port on the Harmony module. First-stage capture came at 15:52 UTC; all 16 bolts were driven at 16:02.
“Elon! Elon! Elon!”
Musk: “There’s so much that could have gone wrong, and it went right. We were able to overcome some last-minute issues with some fast thinking at NASA mission control and SpaceX mission control, and we got it there.”
“There were definitely some close moments where we potentially could have called an abort … in particular narrowing the field of view of the LIDAR.”
Read the logMusk spoke in front of the whole company, beside the Dragon that had flown in 2010. He said there had been close moments, and named the fix. The crowd chanted his name. Then the Dragon team went to the beach.
Several hundred bottles of champagne lined up outside mission control. The crowd chanted “Elon! Elon! Elon!” Afterward the Dragon team, awake for days, went to a Swiss restaurant on the Venice Beach boardwalk.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 5, pp. 125 to 126“I’d been digesting my guts. And then I am drinking champagne at six in the morning.”
“Pouring champagne at like four in the morning, and I hadn’t showered.”
Capture was at 6:56 a.m.
The hatch.
Harmony-side hatch already open. Pressure equalizing. Crew nearly two hours ahead of plan.
Spaceflight Now, status logHATCH OPEN. Pettit opens Dragon’s hatch and enters, over the Tasman Sea. Kononenko enters with him. Both wear masks and goggles.
Spaceflight Now, status logPettit: “the smell inside smells like a brand new car.” He compares the cargo to a pickup truck load.
Spaceflight Now, status logImages of astronauts aboard the space station early Saturday morning opening Dragon’s hatch and entering the spacecraft for the first time
Read the update
The next morning Pettit opened the hatch, nearly two hours ahead of plan, and floated in with Oleg Kononenko. Dragon smelled like a new car, he said. By Monday the crew had emptied it and packed it with cargo for Earth.
Don Pettit: “…the smell inside smells like a brand new car.”
“This is sort of the equivalent of the golden spike.”
Read the log“I knew what I would see: a window! This is the future.” … “It has a beautiful golden hatch.”
Crew cargo transfer tagup with the ground.
NASA station status report, May 28, 2012Part five: home
May 31, 2012
Release.
UNBERTHED from Harmony nadir by Kuipers and Acaba on the arm. 9 d 0 h 23 min after launch. 5 d 16 h 5 min attached.
Spaceflight Now, status log
RELEASED by the arm. Pettit at the cupola controls. Over the Southern Ocean southeast of Africa.
Spaceflight Now, status log
The arm unbolted Dragon, carried it ten meters out, and let go at 2:49 a.m. Hawthorne time. Three short burns took it out of the station’s 200-meter sphere.
Splashdown.
DEORBIT BURN begins over the Indian Ocean. 9 min 50 s planned.
Spaceflight Now, status logCommunications blackout as plasma builds around Dragon. The signal is expected back in six minutes.
Spaceflight Now, status logTwo drogue chutes deploy at 45,000 feet.
Spaceflight Now, status logThree main chutes deploy.
Spaceflight Now, status logSPLASHDOWN in the Pacific, about 560 miles west of Baja California, 9 days 7 hours 58 minutes after liftoff.
Spaceflight Now, status log
This morning, at approximately 8:42 AM Pacific/11:42 AM Eastern, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) completed its historic mission when the Dragon spacecraft splashed down safely in the Pacific.
Read the releaseDragon came down under three parachutes, about 560 miles west of Baja California, 9 days and 8 hours after launch. NASA’s cargo manager told Musk: “We became your customer today.”
Musk, 8:49 a.m. Hawthorne: “Splashdown successful!! Sending fast boat to Dragon lat/long provided by P3 tracking planes.”
Musk, that afternoon: “In baseball terminology, this would be a grand slam.”
Alan Lindenmoyer, NASA’s commercial cargo manager: “We became your customer today.”
Read the log
“We became your customer today.”