In another picture-perfect arrival, the first official SpaceX cargo Dragon pulled up with an initial shipment of supplies to the International Space Station early Wednesday morning at 6:56am ET. It was the fourth successful launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, the third flight for a Dragon spacecraft, and its second successful berthing. Astronauts aboard the ISS quickly captured the craft this morning, well ahead of the timeline. They will spend the next few days unloading equipment and groceries.

This mission is entitled "CRS-1," denoting the first commercial resupply mission to the Station. If the rest of the mission—the separation and landing—takes place without any hitches, Dragon will have completed a successful transition from NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to the new and ongoing Commercial Resupply Services program. SpaceX has a contract with NASA under CRS to deliver a total of 12 cargo missions.

A cargo Dragon spacecraft berthed for the first time with the Station at the end of May. That very successful COTS 2/3 mission combined two flights, one to demonstrate the capabilities of the Dragon and another to actually berth with the Station. It was during that mission that the world was really introduced to SpaceX, the Dragon, and its new role as a commercial cargo carrier for NASA. Anyone who hadn't previously heard of the Dragon knew about it afterward, given the substantial news coverage that accomplishment received. COTS 2/3 was successful, from launch to splashdown and delivery of both a physical payload from the Station and an unintentional message to a skeptical Congress of changing times.

CRS-1 is, hopefully, a transition from the new to the routine. The spacecraft's payload includes only 545kg of a possible 6000kg. The reason NASA is using less than a tenth of the Dragon's potential is that some of the items aboard are particularly bulky. Alongside 118kg of food, clothing, and batteries, the spacecraft is carrying 177kg of station equipment. That portion includes a GLACIER (General Laboratory Active Cryogenic Experiment Refrigerator) freezer, good to -160°C. It also includes a FIR (Fluids Integrated Rack) full of physics experiments, an experiment examining the behavior of the yeast Candida albicans in microgravity, another physics experiment rack filled with fluid-flow microgravity experiments, and a bag filled with materials that will be deliberately exposed to space outside the Station. All of these items fit in the pressurized section of the spacecraft, leaving the unpressurized section empty. As Chris Bergin detailed over at nasaspaceflight.com, SpaceX used the empty space to carry a small communications satellite for Orbcomm since NASA wasn't using it.

Orbcomm's prototype OG2 communications satellite suffered an unfortunate fate due to an engine malfunction about 1:19 after the launch. A medium-sized cloud of expanding gas burst from the rocket in a manner suggestive of a major problem in one of the outer engines. In a statement released on October 8 SpaceX said that the engine didn't explode, but didn't mention cracked combustion chambers, disintegrated turbopumps, or various other causes of unexpected disassembly. As it was designed to do, the rocket recalculated its trajectory and proceeded to orbit on its remaining eight engines.

Unfortunately, the engine malfunction placed the Falcon 9 upper stage in a slightly different approach to the International Space Station. That new approach caused the stage to violate a set of conditions known as a "safety gate"; there was no way the satellite could ascend to its intended 350km x 750km orbit without crossing the ISS orbit, and no time to check to make sure that no collision would occur. The second stage's flight control software automatically cancelled its second burn, leaving the satellite in a much lower (203km x 323km) orbit than intended. Engineers from Orbcomm and Sierra Nevada Corporation, the manufacturer, are deciding what can be done, and both SpaceX and Orbcomm are being noticeably cagey about their press releases.

The good news for everyone but Orbcomm and its stockholders is that the Dragon spacecraft never noticed. It reached its destination and will remain berthed to the Station for the next few weeks, a much longer berth than the last one, before departing for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The CRS-1 cargo craft will carry back down to Earth experiments that have been accumulating up at the Station since the end of the Space Shuttle program.

Although NASA has had other spacecraft from other parts of the world to take cargo up to the Station, until Dragon was ready, only the Shuttle has ever been capable of bringing cargo back down. According to Julie Robinson, a NASA ISS Program Scientist speaking about the mission Monday on NASA TV, when CRS-1 departs it will take with it a GLACIER freezer filled with blood and urine samples and other results of experiments enacted aboard ISS during the past year. With a new bureaucratic structure in place for the Station, now properly designated the International Space Station National Laboratory, the ISS has better capabilities for conducting joint experiments with commercial entities or other national institutions and organizing the resulting intellectual property.

CRS-1 represents a big transition for a young company, but it's an even bigger transition for NASA and for the fledgling commercial space industry. SpaceX's contract for delivery services resembles any other delivery contract in many ways. Much like a FedEx envelope, Dragon can carry almost anything NASA wants to ship in its pressurized and unpressurized sections, up to a combined 13,200 pounds. When Orbital Sciences completes its own COTS development agreement in the next several months, Orbital's contract will work the same way. SpaceX and Orbital will become the FedEx and UPS of the space cargo business.

Shipping cargo from the Earth's surface to a destination in space is a far different business than launching satellites. These first dozen cargos are slated for the only currently existing manned destination in space, the International Space Station, but other destinations are being planned by both public and private entities. The Orlando Sentinel announced an as-yet unconfirmed (but long-rumored) NASA plan for an outpost at Earth-Moon Lagrange point 2 (EML2), out beyond the dark side of the Moon. Bigelow Aerospace plans to build space stations for both government and private players. Another example, Excalibur Almaz would also like to put manned stations in orbit. As humans create more destinations, SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, and other companies will presumably bid to ship cargo (and later, humans) to them. And thus, with the first CRS mission, a new kind of business has been created.