Dragon

Dragon CRS-2 being "berthed" to the Harmony Module

Dragon was designed and developed by Space Exploration Technologies. It became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station on 25 May 2012.

Launched by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon can send cargo up and can bring a large amount of cargo back down to earth; something the other cargo ships servicing the ISS can't do. This allows for experiments conducted on the station to be returned to earth for study. 

CRS-3 Launch

The spacecraft was developed with help from NASA via Space Act Agreements under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. SpaceX was one of two companies awarded Space Act Agreements in 2006. After six years of development, SpaceX was ready to start sending cargo to the ISS under the Commercial Resupply Services contract.

When the Dragon spacecraft gets close to the space station, the station robotic arm reaches out and "grabs" it. The arm the pulls the spacecraft to the bottom of the Harmony module and "berths" it to its Common Berthing Mechanism. Once there, the hatches between the ISS and Dragon can be opened for the crew to unpack supplies and repack it with trash and unneeded equipment for return to earth.

Interior of COTS 2 Dragon at ISS

There are two sections to the Dragon. It has a pressurized capsule, and an unpressurized "trunk." The trunk section carries the solar panels and allows for transport of unpressurized cargo. The trunk of Dragon has a volume of 14 cubic meters. The trunk separates from the capsule after its deorbit burn, and it burns up.

Dragon can be packed with about 3310 kg of cargo, be it pressurized, unpressurized or somewhere in between. It can return about 2500 kg of cargo, which is mostly due to parachute design limitations. The pressurized volume of the spacecraft is 11.2 cubic meters.

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List of Dragon missions:

Designation	Launch	Berthing	Landing	Notes
SpX-C1	8 December 2010	N/A	8 December 2010	This mission was a test of the Dragon systems and only orbited earth twice.
SpX-C2+	22 May 2012	25 May 2012	31 May 2012	Second test flight of Dragon. First private vehicle to visit ISS.
SpaceX CRS-1	8 October 2012	10 October 2012	28 October 2012	First Commercial Ressupply Services mission for NASA.
SpaceX CRS-2	1 March 2013	3 March 2013	26 March 2013	First mission to carry cargo in trunk.
SpaceX CRS-3	18 April 2014	20 April 2014	18 May 2014	First flight of an upgraded Dragon to supply more power to cargo devices.
SpaceX CRS-4	21 September 2014	23 September 2014	25 October 2014	First launch of Dragon with living payload in the form of 20 mice.
SpaceX CRS-5	10 January 2015	12 January 2015	11 February 2015	Falcon 9 first stage attemped recovery on a "barge."

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