SpaceX's Elon Musk & NASA Chief Holding Google+ Hangout Today

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, left, and SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk, view the historic Dragon capsule, right, that returned to Earth on May 31 following the first successful mission by a private company to carry supplies to the International Space Station on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at the SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas. CREDIT: NASA/Bill Ingalls View full size image

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, founder of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, teams up with NASA chief Charles Bolden in a Google+ "hangout" today to discuss this weekend's planned launch of SpaceX's first official cargo delivery to the International Space Station.

Musk's SpaceX is poised to launch a Falcon 9 rocket topped with an unmanned Dragon space capsule on Sunday night (Oct. 7) on a three-day trip to deliver a half-ton of supplies to the space station. Liftoff is set for 8:35 p.m. EDT (0035 Monday GMT), with docking at the station set for Oct. 10.

Today's Google+ Hangout begins at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) and will last about a half-hour. You can follow the discussion live here: http://www.nasa.gov/connect/hangout.html

Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX in 2002, and Bolden "will talk about the flight, which will be the first of 12 contracted for NASA by SpaceX to resupply the space station," NASA officials said. The mission is the first for NASA's Commercial Resupply Services program.

A Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, Dragon spacecraft is being prepared for the company's first Commercial Resupply Services, or CRS-1, mission to the International Space Station. This image was taken Sept. 30, 2012.
CREDIT: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX (short for Space Exploration Technologies) has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to provide at least 12 cargo delivery missions to the space station using its unmanned Dragon spacecraft. In May, SpaceX launched a successful demonstration flight to the space station that set the stage for this weekend's Dragon launch. [SpaceX's Dragon Poised to Sunday Launch (Photos)]

While the May test flight did carry some cargo to and from the space station for NASA, this weekend's mission — called the SpaceX CRS-1 flight — is the first official cargo run for SpaceX. The Dragon spacecraft is packed with 1,000 pounds (453 kilograms) of supplies for the space station's three-person crew, including gear for 166 different experiments.

SpaceX is one of two private spaceflight firms contracted by NASA to provide cargo delivery serves to the space station. The other company, the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp., has a $1.9 billion deal to use its new Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft to fly at least eight cargo missions for NASA.

With NASA's space shuttle fleet retired, the space agency is depending on private space taxi, like those planned by SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and others, to ferry U.S. cargo — and eventually astronauts — into and from low-Earth orbit.

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft are the first American spacecraft to make unmanned resupply flights to the space station. However, robotic spacecraft from space agencies in Russia, Europe and Japan do make regular trips to stock up the orbiting lab.

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Quiz: How Well Do You Know SpaceX's Dragon Spaceship?

The spaceflight company SpaceX is one of several firms building private space taxis and cargo ships to launch astronauts and supplies into space. But there's more to SpaceX than meets the eye. Test your SpaceX know-how here.

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Quiz: How Well Do You Know SpaceX's Dragon Spaceship?

The spaceflight company SpaceX is one of several firms building private space taxis and cargo ships to launch astronauts and supplies into space. But there's more to SpaceX than meets the eye. Test your SpaceX know-how here.

0 of questions complete

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