Private space firm SpaceX launches first successful test flight

The private space company SpaceX launched its first successful rocket into orbit Friday after an earlier attempt was aborted just before liftoff.

SpaceX launched the 180-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket at 2:45 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The firm is expected to compete for business ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station if President Barack Obama carries out his plan to end NASA's manned space flight program.

NASA has awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract for 12 flights to the space station beginning in 2012, providing the company is first certified for space flight. The company spent $400 million developing the rocket, half of which came from NASA.

Despite the successful test, supporters of NASA's shuttle program are still strongly against relying on the private sector for space flight.

“While this test flight was important, the program to demonstrate commercial cargo and crew transport capabilities, which I support, was intended to enhance — not replace — NASA’s own proven abilities to deliver critical cargo and humans to low Earth orbit," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas).

Hutchison has been a vocal opponent of the president's plan to cancel the Constellation program and with her colleage Sen. Jay Rockefeller, (D-W.Va.) recently wrote to NASA's inspector general requesting an investigation into whether the administration has begun terminating the program prematurely by transferring the program manager.

She also noted that SpaceX's successful test was more than a year late, proving that private firms are still not ready to take over space transport duties from NASA.

"Make no mistake, even this modest success is more than a year behind schedule, and the project deadlines of other private space companies continue to slip as well," Hutchison said.

"This test does not change the fact that commercial space programs are not ready to close the gap in human spaceflight if the space shuttle is retired this year with no proven replacement capability and the Constellation program is simultaneously cancelled as the president proposes.”