SpaceX launches into history

Things didn’t go quite to plan for SpaceX’s first launch attempt late last week. Technical difficulties saw it having to be aborted in the last few seconds.

Today it launched its way into the history books by getting the Dragon spacecraft into space. From now on, Dragon’s mission will be to dock with the International Space Station, the first privately funded and built spacecraft to do so.

So far the mission seems to be going well, with the Dragon’s solar arrays having deployed successfully

Space X is the brainchild of South African-born PayPal founder, inventor, engineer and billionaire genius Elon Musk (If that description sounds a bit like Tony Stark, it’s probably because Robert Downey Jr based his character on Musk).

Much of the tech behind Dragon was designed and engineered by Musk and it is his hope that its successors will help with future Mars missions.

Once again, you can check out a live webcast of the launch or follow SpaceX’s Twitter stream.