Friday, March 1, 2013

SpaceX Clears Glitches, Heads Towards ISS

Things are looking a little less stressful for SpaceX, the commercial rocket and spacecraft developer founded by Elon Musk, after the company cleared up a glitch which had taken three of its thruster pods on its Dragon spacecraft out of service earlier today, after a successful launch from Cape Canaveral. According to a status update from Musk, all of its thruster pods are now operating nominally, with the spacecraft preparing to raise its orbit as it heads towards the ISS. The high altitude drama for Hawthorne-based began earlier Friday morning, when the Dragon had reached orbit; apparently, a glitch somewhere in its system took three of its four thrusters offline, leaving the spacecraft unable to reach the ISS. SpaceX said all of the thrusters went online at 2:57 p.m. E.T. The spacecraft is now expected to reach the ISS sometime on Saturday.