History was made in May when the unmanned spacecraft Dragon, perched atop the Falcon 9, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center by the Space Exploration (SpaceX) company. This was the first privately-built spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (ISS).

The original launch was delayed by a few days when at the last second (literally, at the last half second!) the onboard computers automatically shut everything down.

Once successfully launched Dragon then began the process of matching orbits with the ISS in preparation for docking with the station. It would undergo a series of tests to make certain that the commands were correctly executed before being allowed to dock.

As the pair of spacecraft flew overhead in the early morning of 24 May, I was able to capture a series of photographs that showed the very bright ISS close to the very dim Dragon. As I was capturing the images, however, I wondered where the Dragon was — as I was unable to see it. Only after loading the images onto the computer and zooming in was I able to see the two spacecraft.

The first image is a composite of three images each of 15 seconds duration. If you look very carefully you can see the dim track of Dragon just a few pixels below the bright track of ISS. The second image is a single, cropped image zoomed to 200% that does a  better job of showing the two spacecraft as they flew together.

At this time, the Dragon was likely undergoing its command tests and was only a few miles from the larger ISS.

On May 31, SpaceX/Dragon successfully splashed down into the Pacific Ocean where it was recovered by ships and taken to port.

This flight was a historic moment for the true beginning of commercial spaceflight and I feel lucky to have been able to capture a sequence of photographs as it underwent its first space test.