After Dragon’s historic docking, America has more new spaceships on the way

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  This image of Dragon docked to the International Space Station was captured by Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner. [credit: Ivan Vagner/Twitter ]

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft made history for the second time on Sunday.

On May 25, 2012, a Cargo Dragon was grabbed by the ISS. It became the first private spacecraft to visit the International Space Station. On Sunday, when Dragonship Endeavour docked with the station 15 minutes ahead of schedule, above the border of China and Mongolia, it became the first private spacecraft to fly crew there (or anywhere in orbit, for that matter).

After the docking, the spacecraft's commander, NASA Astronaut Doug Hurley, was complimentary after he and Bob Behnken spent some time flying Dragon manually. "It flew just about like the sim, so my congratulations to the folks at Hawthorne," he said, referring to SpaceX's headquarters in California, where the astronauts spent many weeks practicing in a flight simulator. "It flew really well, very crisp. We couldn't be happier about the performance of the vehicle."

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