CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Triumphant from start to finish, the SpaceX Dragon capsule parachuted into the Pacific on Thursday to conclude the first private delivery to the international space station and inaugurate NASA’s new approach to exploration.
“Welcome home, baby,” said SpaceX’s elated chief executive, Elon Musk, who said the old-fashioned splashdown was “like seeing your kid come home.”
He said he was a bit surprised to hit such a grand slam.
“You can see so many ways that it could fail, and it works, and you’re like, ‘Wow, OK, it didn’t fail,’ ” Musk said laughing from his company’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. “I think anyone who’s been involved in the design of a really complicated machine can sympathize with what I’m saying.”
The goal for SpaceX, he told reporters, will be to repeat the success on future flights.
The unmanned supply ship scored a bull’s-eye with its arrival, splashing down into the ocean about 500 miles off Mexico’s Baja California. A fleet of recovery ships quickly moved in to pull the capsule aboard a barge for towing to Los Angeles.
It was the first time since the shuttles stopped flying last summer that NASA got back a big load from the space station — in this case, more than half a ton of experiments and equipment.
“This successful splashdown and the many other achievements of this mission herald a new era in U.S. commercial spaceflight,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.
