Space station Expedition 34 crew members Kevin Ford and Tom Marshburn of NASA used the station's robotic arm to successfully capture Dragon at 5:31 a.m. The capture came one day, 19 hours and 22 minutes after the mission's launch. The station was 253 miles above northern Ukraine.
The bad news is that the Dragon seemed to have problems along the way that SpaceX will need to resolve for future missions. To recap, about 10 minutes after Friday launch of the Dragon capsule, three of the four sets of rocket thrusters failed to engage. Here is now SpaceX explained it:
After Dragon separated from Falcon 9’s second stage approximately nine minutes after launch, a minor issue with some of Dragon’s oxidizer tanks was detected. Within a few hours, SpaceX engineers had identified and corrected the issue, normalizing the oxidizer pressure and returning operations to normal. Dragon recomputed its ascent profile as it was designed to and is now on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) with possible arrival on Sunday, just one day past the original timeline.
I am not surprised SpaceX will spin it as a "minor issue," but was it? Hopefully, NASA and SpaceX will thoroughly investigate the problem. You may recall that the first resupply mission to the ISS also had an "anomaly" in a rocket engine. Given the complex nature of such missions, problems such as these are not unheard of. The key is learning from the problems. And SpaceX's Mr. Musk does not want to do anything to jeopardize future missions with NASA.
In 22 days, the Dragon will return to Earth, bringing back various science experiments being tested on the ISS. Let's hope things are smooth for the rest of the mission.