A private cargo rocket bound for the International Space Station blasted off early Tuesday morning in what NASA hopes will mark an important step in handing routine space missions over to the private sector.
With the brilliant glare of nine engines spewing out 1 million pounds of thrust, the rocket, a Falcon 9 built by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation of Hawthorne, Calif., or SpaceX, rose slowly off the launching pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here, then arced upward into the night sky.
“What a spectacular start,” the NASA administrator, Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., told reporters afterward. “It was a picture-perfect launch.”
The payload is only about 1,000 pounds of cargo, and nothing of great value. The importance is instead technical and symbolic.
If the cargo capsule makes it all the way to the space station, it would be the first commercial, rather than government-operated, spacecraft to dock at the space station. A successful mission would reinforce NASA’s efforts to turn over basic transportation to low-Earth orbit to private companies.
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