SpaceX: Dragon to start regular flights to space station

SpaceX Dragon, the first private spacecraft to have docked at the International Space Station, is to launch on its second flight Sunday night from Cape Canaveral, Florida, according to DPA. Dragon's experimental docking at the station in May confirmed that NASA can safely start handing off cargo transport to private industry while it concentrates on Mars and moon exploration. SpaceX is to launch at 8:34 pm Sunday (0034 GMT Monday), the first official launch under its 1.6-billion-dollar contract with NASA for 12 cargo deliveries. With the east coast bracing for rainy weather, a backup date of Monday (Tuesday GMT time) has been set. Dragon, a reusable unmanned craft, has been under development for 10 years. Since NASA retired the ageing shuttles in 2011, the US has had to depend on Russia to get its astronauts and cargo to the ISS. In August, NASA awarded a combined 1.1 billion dollars to three aerospace firms - Sierra Nevada Corporation, SpaceX and Boeing - to develop spacecraft to carry astronauts within the next five years. Under that contract for human spaceflight, Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) is developing the Orion spacecraft for crew and the space Launch System (SLS) for heavy cargo. SpaceX said that on Sunday's cargo launch, Dragon would carry 455 kilogrammes of supplies, including 'critical materials' for 166 scientific studies.