{"id":24785,"date":"2018-12-08T16:22:55","date_gmt":"2018-12-08T16:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24785"},"modified":"2018-12-08T16:22:55","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T16:22:55","slug":"spacex-makes-christmas-delivery-to-international-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24785","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX makes Christmas delivery to International Space Station"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A SpaceX delivery full of Christmas goodies arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, following a slight delay caused by a communication drop-out.<\/p>\n

The American company’s Dragon capsule pulled up at the orbiting lab three days after launching from Cape Canaveral in Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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SpaceX makes history by re-using a rocket (2:04)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Commander Alexander Gerst used the space<\/a> station’s big robotic arm to grab the cargo carrier, as the two craft soared 250 miles above the Pacific.<\/p>\n

It took two tries to get the Dragon close enough for capture.<\/p>\n

NASA<\/a> called off the Dragon’s first approach because of trouble with the communication network that serves the space station.<\/p>\n

Equipment failure in New Mexico for NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system resulted in a temporary loss of communication with the station.<\/p>\n

For safety, Mission Control ordered the Dragon to back up.<\/p>\n

It was a successful take two, just an hour-and-a-half late, after NASA switched to another TDRS satellite.<\/p>\n

The Dragon holds everything the station astronauts need for Christmas dinner, as well as mice and worms for science experiments, and more than 2,270kg of station equipment.<\/p>\n

The holiday food includes smoked turkey, green bean casserole, candied yams, cranberry sauce and fruitcake. There also are shortbread and butter cookies, with tubes of icing for decorating.<\/p>\n

Three of the space station residents will be on board for Christmas; the other three will return to Earth on December 20. Until then, the station is home to two Americans, two Russians, one Canadian and Gerst, who is German.<\/p>\n

It is the second space station visit for the recycled Dragon – it was there last year too.<\/p>\n

SpaceX has been making station shipments for NASA since 2012. This is its 16th delivery under contract.<\/p>\n

Two other supply ships are attached to the space station: one Russian and the other sent by NASA’s other commercial shipper, Northrop Grumman.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A SpaceX delivery full of Christmas goodies arrived at the International Space Station on Saturday, following a slight delay caused by a communication drop-out. The American company’s Dragon capsule pulled up at the orbiting lab three days after launching from Cape Canaveral in Florida.\u00a0 SpaceX makes history by re-using a rocket (2:04) Commander Alexander Gerst…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":24786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}