Details Behind Wednesday's Successful COTS Demo 1 Flight

We're still all abuzz over the successful SpaceX/NASA collaboration that resulted in the first commercial payload orbited and recovered back to dear old Mother Earth. While ANN's aerospace affiliations have made it easy for us to stay close to the action and the people making it happen, we simply must admit to more than a little envy of all that occurred and the very talented people who made it happen.

This is serious hairy-chested real-live rocket science and it would not be unusual, maybe even expected, for them to have had a LOT more trouble with the Falcon9 program by now... but they haven't and history has truly been made. And better yet, SpaceX's Dragon has orbited the Earth and come home safely.

Dragon is a free-flying, reusable spacecraft being developed by SpaceX under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Initiated internally by SpaceX in 2005, the Dragon spacecraft is made up of a pressurized capsule and unpressurized trunk used for Earth to LEO transport of pressurized cargo, unpressurized cargo, and/or crew members.

In December 2008, NASA announced the selection of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) when the Space Shuttle retires. The $1.6 billion contract represents a minimum of 12 flights, with an option to order additional missions for a cumulative total contract value of up to $3.1 billion.

FMI: www.spacex.com, www.nasa.gov, www.aero-tv.net, www.youtube.com/aerotvnetwork, http://twitter.com/AeroNews