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SpaceX launch to make history

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    Private company sending rocket to space station

  • Duration 2:56
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It to dock at the International Space Station will not carry a NASA logo instead for the first time.

A private company is sending a spacecraft to the International Space Station.

The company's called Space Exploration Technologies but most know it is space ex.

Last year NASA awarded that -- 75 million dollars to build safe space but space -- for US astronauts.

Easy for me to say that was just a few months before NASA retired its shuttle program entirely.

And since then in the US who has largely relied on the Russians to ferry astronauts back and forth from the space station.

So tomorrow morning's launch could provide a glimpse of the future of the American space exploration.

When NASA teams up with a private business Trace Gallagher with the news he's -- -- evening when do we expect this thing that hook up with the International Space Station.

Well it's in the dragon -- -- tomorrow morning aboard a falcon nine rocket 4:55.

AM from Cape Canaveral and then on Monday -- they'll do kind of a dry runs it would get this capsule within a mile and a half of the International Space Station to kind of check out its maneuverability.

And if all goes well on Tuesday the dragon capsule get close enough to the International Space Station you can see -- there.

That you'll grab onto it with its robotic arm and -- once it -- -- a -- about a thousand pounds of cargo -- the I SS and take home about thirteen hundred pounds of trash but NASA and SpaceX keep emphasizing this is only -- -- Just listen.

And this is a test -- What's important from a SpaceX perspective on a test plays to make sure we learned something.

Hopefully we learn a lot.

And hopefully we make a lot of progress.

But but really what we're here to do is to demonstrate the spacecraft.

-- -- out to maximum extent possible.

-- it out the ship will be docked to the International Space Station for about two weeks and then it'll come home the old fashioned way splashing down in the ocean ship and then NASA and SpaceX could really have a long partnership ahead -- -- this goes well they've already got twelve more cargo flights planned and then now SpaceX gets about one point five billion dollars from NASA.

And if those go well the plan is 34 years down the road they can start shuttling astronauts back and forth.

To -- International Space Station and finally bringing private citizens to -- yet.

It -- built space station.

But in the meantime NASA has bigger fish to fry listen.

I believe that this transition is is very important for continuing that push outward into the solar system once we get.

Private enterprise and economic interest out to -- earth -- there will be no turning back.

Yeah -- other companies are also getting into the lower space game -- -- in fact Boeing plans its first flight.

Sometime in the fall are just race -- --