While you've been sleeping Australia, some history has been happening.

The Dragon capsule at the end of the Canadarm
robotic arm, viewed from within the ISS

Some new history that is. We've become accustomed to 2012 being the year of 50th anniversaries of great accomplishments in space exploration. But now at last we have a new frontier being forged - and it isn't a frontier being forged by NASA this time. It's commercial space travel.

Overnight, the commercial spacecraft Dragon - launched into space three days ago by the also commercially-developed Falcon rocket - docked with the International Space Station.

Capture by the robotic arm

The Dragon was launched by SpaceX, a private firm headed up by Elon Musk (@elonmusk), the founder of PayPal. It's fantastic seeing the geeks who have cashed in on the internet explosion putting back into geeky science! What a contrast to the billionaire miners who just keep taking and taking...

SpaceX is no small operation either. It has taken some 1800 staff to get this mission off the planet and up to the ISS. And if you've been thinking "wouldn't it be cool to work in space travel but all the cool jobs are taken", then think again. Check the SpaceX vacancies page - more than 100 rocket science jobs up for grabs.

Inspection prior to berthing. Nice view....

Anyway, here are some screen grabs from the live HD video feed as Dragon was captured and brought into its berth with the ISS. As astronaut Don Pettit on the ISS tweeted:

A hard mating. History made!

"Looks like we caught a Dragon by the tail."