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j_col

NASA is broadcasting:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/ustream.html

Anyone know what time it's expected to dock at?

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spaceX says "coverage begins at 4:30 PT" http://www.spacex.com/

Here is that in your local time: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4%3A30am+pt+in+local+ti...

It's in 1 hour 48 minutes from the timestamp of this comment

"Webcast start time now targeting 5:45 AM PT / 8:45 AM ET. Times are subject to change so please check back for updates."

https://spacex.com/updates.php

current estimate: 9:40 AM CT (in the video stream, and they stress it's an estimate).

They just announced an 8:10 am central time for robotic capture. After the arm makes the capture it's about 3 hours until it is fully docked to the station.

Docking in orbit is harder than it appears. Speed and altitude are linked so you can't just thrust towards the station or you will wind up in a different orbit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_rendezvous#Methods_of_app...

Dragon doesn't autonomously dock. It flies within range of the space station's robotic arm, is grappled, and then is slowly berthed to a docking port.

4:12AM CT according to the NASA broadcast

Perfect, I haven't missed it yet!

Which is 09:12 UTC.

Wow, it's 4:07ct and I just woke up (insomnia)...great timing. All I see is a small blinking light though.

When will it happen? Is it behind schedule or is the 4:12 CT time wrong???

anyone got a Youtube Live stream link? UStream is very slow here.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html?param=stati... works for me, even though the ustream one did not.

It also appears that the docking isn't really supposed to start for another 2 hours.

Thanks for the update - where'd you get that snippet of information? I tried to find a schedule of sorts but had no luck...

According to the image that's currently on https://spacex.com/ , coverage begins at 4:30am PT.

Someone here submitted this last night as the low-def nasa-tv link. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-mobile

This is the only one which gives me actual video (though it's just of a computer screen atm, a deathstar-like graphic) - the others had voices, and no video but a small blinking light and vertical bands near the bottom of the screen).

uh oh, now it's also showing a blinking light and bands...

EDIT at last, Dragon sliding across the earth, from the ISS. Amazing seeing one spacecraft from another. Later, a thermal image of ISS from Dragon. But they're mostly showing people in front of computers...

That's the same feed. That graphic was the exclusion zone around the ISS, now we're back to the blinking light.

Watching dragon sliding over those clouds is pretty hypnotic. You can see why they say watching earth from space makes the boundaries between countries disappear.

You'll see the Earth behind in a few minutes when the ISS crosses back into day: http://www.isstracker.com/ http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/sunearth.html

What are the tiny objects that seemed to be criss-crossing all over the background of the blinking light (visible clearly in fullscreen) ? Other satellites?

either a city or another satellite. The first "mysterious light" I saw, which I thought was another lit satellite, was eventually described by the channel narrator as the city of Los Angeles going by far below. It was late at night, and we were seeing the lights from the LA metro area.

The NASA guy is using Windows XP, its pretty funny, he just screen-shared in the stream.

I'm sure its some super custom software though.

If NASA had switched to Vista, station would have deorbited.

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