First private Dragon space cargo flight launch

The US Space administration on Friday announced the launch of the first-ever private commercial cargo flight to the International Space Station (ISS) will launch in February. NASA's announcement comes a year after the company Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, became the first private business to orbit the atmosphere and safely return to Earth. The launch of the Dragon space capsule is set to take place at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Dragon will carry a load of supplies and fly two miles within the International Space Station, for a checkout of all its systems. Then it will close in, with station astronauts grabbing the capsule with a robotic arm.SpaceX-run by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk-is one of several companies vying for space station visiting privileges. It hopes to step up to astronaut ferry trips in perhaps three more years.  In the meantime, Americans will be forced to continue buying seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft NASA has turned to industry to help stock the space station now that the space shuttles are retired, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in this startup effort. The station currently is supplied by Russian, European and Japanese vessels.Congress appropriated USD 406 million for that effort, considerably less than NASA's requested USD 850 million.