SpaceX Dragon lands in Florida

A history-making space capsule has landed at Cape Canaveral's museum.

The Dragon Capsule by SpaceX -- the first commercial enterprise to launch, fly, land and recover a spacecraft from Earth orbit -- is now on display at the Air Force Space and Missile History Center.

Flown on a SpaceX rocket last December and unveiled for the first time to the public on Friday, the capsule is the forerunner to a NASA demonstration flight slated for this fall.

"Dragon, the first commercially manufactured, human-rated transport vehicle, may serve as a critical asset in the country's next-generation manned space exploration initiatives," SpaceX said in a statement.

Dragon is a free-flying, reusable spacecraft being developed by SpaceX under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Initiated internally by SpaceX in 2005, the Dragon spacecraft is made up of a pressurized capsule and unpressurised trunk used for Earth to LEO transport of pressurised cargo, unpressurized cargo, and/or crew members.

The Dragon spacecraft is comprised of 3 main elements: the Nosecone, which protects the vessel and the docking adaptor during ascent; the Spacecraft, which houses the crew and/or pressurised cargo as well as the service section containing avionics, the RCS system, parachutes, and other support infrastructure; and the Trunk, which provides for the stowage of unpressurized cargo and will support Dragon’s solar arrays and thermal radiators.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - Dragon