SpaceX Dragon capsule splashes down

— -- The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, capping the first private cargo run to the space station.

Space station astronauts detached the cargo capsule from the International Space Station in the early morning with the 58-foot robot arm aboard the orbiting lab. A series of rocket firings lowered the capsule's orbit from 230 miles high, allowing it to re-enter the atmosphere and parachute to an ocean landing about 11:42 a.m. EDT, more than 560 miles southwest of Los Angeles.

The re-entry was reminiscent of Mercury and Apollo capsules returning to Earth in the era before the space shuttle, although it relied on three boats and a barge to retrieve the capsule, instead of the U.S. Navy.

"Dragon is in the water," said Josh Byerly of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, which oversees space station operations.

The spacecraft delivered roughly 1,000 pounds of food and equipment to the space station on the mission and returned with 1,455 pounds of used experiments and other cargo. The cargo delivery and return were the first of 12 such missions planned for the spacecraft through 2015, as part of a $1.6 billion agreement between SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., and NASA.

The spacecraft was launched last week aboard one of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The mission was run by SpaceX engineers out of their Hawthorne headquarters, and there was space agency oversight. Berthing of the capsule last Friday followed two days of safety demonstrations of its maneuvering capabilities and a swift work-around of a problem with one laser that provided the range readings as it approached the orbiting lab.

"SpaceX should be justifiably proud of the technical achievement they have succeeded with on this mission," says space analyst Marcia Smith of the Space and Technology Policy Group in Arlington, Va. "Now we will have to see if the kind of private-public partnership seen here does save the taxpayer's money in the long run."

A second private firm, Orbital Science Corp., of Dulles, Va., plans to launch its Cygnus cargo capsule to the space station on a demonstration launch later this summer, part of an eight-mission contract with the space agency. "Much has been made of the commercial side of this partnerships, but taxpayers have contributed around $500 million to the development of these cargo vehicles," Smith said.

For now, the Dragon capsule represents the only cargo capsule capable of returning equipment to Earth from the space station, unlike the Russian, European and Japanese ones that burn up on re-entry.

After recovery of the capsule by divers operating from a barge, the capsule will be returned to a McGregor, Texas, factory for examination and repair for its next cargo run. Future Dragon capsules will aim for ground landings with "helicopter precision," SpaceX founder Elon Musk noted by Twitter during the capsule's return on Thursday.