SpaceX

Next up for the Dragon is a series of thruster firings that will set up a rendezvous with the orbiting laboratory on Sunday.

NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and astronaut Tim Peake of the European Space Agency will capture the spacecraft using the station’s robotic arm. The crew will pressurize the space between the station and Dragon and open the hatch between the two spacecraft the next day.

You can watch the rendezvous and capture live on NASA TV beginning at 5:30 a.m. Sunday on NASA TV. Installation of the Dragon on the bottom side of the station’s Harmony module is set to begin at 9:30 a.m.

Now sailing through its preliminary orbit, the Dragon spacecraft is unfurling its solar arrays.

After a successful launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the company’s Dragon spacecraft is flying solo and beginning its two-day orbital pursuit of the International Space Station.

Dragon’s power-producing solar arrays will begin deploying in about a minute and a half.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket’s second-stage engine shut down right on time and the company’s Dragon spacecraft is less than a minute away from separation.

Only one minute to go until shutdown of the Falcon 9’s second-stage engine, or SECO. The rocket continues to perform as expected. Meanwhile, the rocket’s first stage successfully landed on a SpaceX drone ship offshore in the Atlantic Ocean.

Image credit: NASA TV

The Falcon 9’s climb continues to go smoothly. Actual launch time was 4:43:31.000.

The Falcon 9 rocket’s nine first-stage Merlin engines cut off on time, shortly followed by stage separation and ignition the vehicle’s second-stage engine. The payload fairing has been jettisoned.

The Falcon 9 rocket is passing through the area of maximum aerodynamic pressure commonly known as Max Q.

A rapid-fire sequence of staging events takes place in about a minute and a half with the shutdown of the first-stage engines, separation of the first stage and ignition of the second stage’s single engine.

Liftoff! The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is climbing up and away from Florida’s Space Coast, carrying “science for today and deep space exploration for tomorrow,” in the words of Launch Commentator George Diller.