SpaceX Dragon launches on resupply flight to space station

Falcon 9 lifts-off Friday from Cape Canaveral to resupply space station. (SpaceX)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A commercial spacecraft loaded with supplies departed America's Space Coast on Friday en route to the International Space Station and it's six person crew.

The Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) Dragon cargo craft is loaded with nearly 5,000 pounds of supplies including water, oxygen, food and equipment for the earth orbiting laboratory.

"Everything looks great with the ascent phase of the mission," SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk confirmed from his company's mission control in Hawthorne, California after launch. "Everything is good on the Dragon front."

The Dragon capsule, riding a top the company's Falcon 9 rocket, lifted-off from it's ocean side launch pad and into an overcast Florida sky at 3:25:22 p.m. EDT, the opening of a one second launch window.

The Falcon's 855,000 pounds of thrust created a 300-foot golden flame pushing the rocket higher as it moved out over the Atlantic waters.

The space station's crew watched the SpaceX television feed of the lift-off as it happened 260 miles above.

Monday's launch marked the third of twelve planned flights by SpaceX in a nearly $1.5 billion contract deal with NASA.

The successful SpaceX launch comes four days after the commercial company signed a twenty-year land lease with NASA for use of the historic launch pad 39-A. SpaceX plans to launch manned spacecraft to the space station from the formed Apollo and space shuttle pad as early as 2017.

On Easter Sunday, the Dragon craft will rendezvous and close to within 20 feet of the orbiting outpost before being grappled by the station's 57-foot long Canadian robotic arm at 7:14 a.m.

Station commander and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio will operate the robotic arm from the station's pressurized 360-degree field of view inside the cupola module.

Just over two hours after the capture, the station's crew will dock Dragon to the earth facing port of the station's Harmony module.

Over the next month, astronauts will unload the resupply craft's 2.3 tons of supplies, and later load Dragon with completed science experiments and trash for it's return to earth sometime in late-May.

Falcon's launch occurred after a five week delay caused by a contamination problem with the payloads section aboard Dragon, and the failure of an Cape Canaveral radar designed to track the rocket in flight.

A launch attempt last Monday was also scrubbed due a hydrogen leak on the rocket's first stage.

NASA is preparing for a spacewalk on Wednesday by astronauts Mastracchio and Steve Swanson to replace a failed station back-up computer known as a multiplexer/ demultiplexer with a spare now located in the station's airlock.

The spacewalk is expected to begin at 9:20 a.m. and last nearly three hours.

(Charles Atkeison reports on aerospace, science and technology. Follow his updates via Twitter @AbsolutSpaceGuy.)