Sunday was a big day in the burgeoning commercial space era with two private companies marking milestones in orbit. After a minor GPS issue delayed Orbital Sciences' berthing with the International Space Station last week, the veteran space company's Cygnus spacecraft was grabbed by the station's robotic arm and pulled in the final meters. And just a few hours later, SpaceX successfully launched the upgraded version of its Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The unmanned Cygnus spacecraft was berthed to the ISS at 8:45 a.m. EDT after successfully demonstrating the final maneuvers for NASA as part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program. The spacecraft, which is roughly the size of a delivery truck, had to show that it can autonomously approach the station from below and complete a series of scheduled approaches and retreats. Eventually it came to a rest 10 meters from the station and astronaut Luca Parmitano maneuvered the robotic arm to bring it the rest of the way.

This morning the hatch on Cygnus was opened and today the six astronauts on board the ISS will begin unpacking the roughly 1,300 pounds of cargo on board. Orbital Sciences' spacecraft has more space (though can carry less mass) inside than SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. But unlike the Dragon capsule, which can return to Earth with scientific experiments and other cargo, Cygnus will just be filled with trash and released to burn up during reentry later this month, similar to the current cargo spacecraft from Russia and Japan.

Having successfully performed the final demonstration mission, Orbital Sciences is expected to fly the first of its eight contracted NASA cargo missions (worth $1.9 billion) in December. SpaceX was initially expected to make the flight, but the development of recent upgrades to its rocket pushed the California company's schedule into 2014. SpaceX completed its demonstration flights for NASA last year, and has already completed two of its 12 contracted cargo flights to the ISS (worth $1.6 billion).

The new version of the Falcon 9 rocket — appropriately dubbed "v1.1" — uses more powerful versions of the company's Merlin rocket engines, producing around 1.5 million pounds of thrust in space, versus around 1 million for the original Falcon 9. In addition to the upgraded power, the nine engines are now arranged in what the company calls an "octaweb." The previous Falcon 9 had a simple 3x3 grid layout of the Merlin 1C engines. The 224-foot-tall Falcon 9 v1.1 has eight Merlin 1D engines arranged in a circle with a single engine in the middle. The company says the new arrangement offers better protection for each engine, and also better protects the other engines should one of them fail, as was the case during the Falcon 9 launch last October.

SpaceX also attempted to relight the first stage of the rocket during its return to Earth, part of the company's plan to build a fully reusable launch vehicle. During yesterday's test, SpaceX managed to relight the first stage twice, once to slow it down from supersonic flight, and a second time near touchdown in the ocean. Company founder Elon Musk had repeatedly said there was a very low likelihood of success for this experimental part of the flight, and as it turns out, he was mostly right.

Musk said the first stage started spinning due to aerodynamic forces after the relight, "so fuel centrifuged and we flamed out." Musk says he is confident that when yesterday's test is combined with the recent tests of the Grasshopper vehicle at SpaceX's Texas facility, if things go well in the next year, SpaceX could begin using a reusable first stage by the end of 2014.

Yesterday's launch was the first time SpaceX has launched from the West Coast, and it was also the first time the Falcon 9 launched a satellite. The previous flights of the rocket were all from Cape Canaveral in Florida and boosted the Dragon spacecraft to orbit. The primary cargo on board yesterday was a Canadian weather satellite, along with a handful of smaller satellites. Using both Florida and California launch sites, SpaceX expects to complete about one launch a month for the next several years to begin fulfilling its backlog of satellite launches for commercial and government customers, as well as the 10 remaining cargo missions to the ISS.