The International Space Station, circling just overhead. (NASA) <\/p>\n
6:38 a.m. CDT, September 29, 2013 <\/p>\n
After a series of successful steering maneuvers, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus freighter parked about 39 feet from the station at 6:50 a.m. EDT\/1050 GMT as the ships sailed 260 miles above the Southern Ocean south of Africa. <\/p>\n
Ten minutes later, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA's Karen Nyberg used the station's robotic arm to pluck the capsule from orbit and prepared to attach it to a berthing slip. <\/p>\n
\"That's a long time coming, looks great,\" radioed astronaut Catherine Coleman from NASA's Mission Control in Houston. <\/p>\n
Cygnus' arrival had been delayed a week - first by a software glitch and then by the higher priority docking of a Russian Soyuz capsule ferrying three new crewmembers to the $100 billion outpost, a project of 15 nations. <\/p>\n
Orbital Sciences' new unmanned Antares rocket blasted off on September 18 from a new launch pad on the Virginia coast to put Cygnus into orbit. <\/p>\n
NASA contributed $288 million toward Antares' and Cygnus' development and awarded Orbital Sciences a $1.9 billion contract for eight station resupply missions, the first of which is targeted for December. <\/p>\n
The U.S. space agency also provided $396 million to privately owned Space Exploration Technologies to help develop the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo ship. The firm, known as SpaceX, holds a $1.5 billion NASA contract for 12 cargo runs to the station, two of which already have been completed. <\/p>\n
On Sunday, SpaceX was poised to test an upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket. Launch from a new complex at Vandenberg Air Force Base, located just north of Lompoc on the central California coast. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The rest is here: The International Space Station, circling just overhead. (NASA) 6:38 a.m. CDT, September 29, 2013 After a series of successful steering maneuvers, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus freighter parked about 39 feet from the station at 6:50 a.m. Continue reading
\nCommercial cargo ship reaches International Space Station<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"