“Looks like we’ve got us a dragon by the tail,” Pettit announced from 250 miles up once he locked onto Dragon’s docking mechanism.

“You’ve made a lot of folks happy down here over in Hawthorne and right here in Houston,” radioed NASA’s Mission Control. “Great job guys.”

NASA controllers clapped as their counterparts at SpaceX’s control center in Hawthorne, Calif. — including Musk — lifted their arms in triumph and jumped out of their seats to exchange high fives. The two control rooms worked together, as equal partners, to pull off the feat.

Although cargo hauls have become routine, Friday’s linkup was significant in that an individual company pulled it off. That chore was previously reserved for a small, elite group of government agencies.

Not only that, the SpaceX Dragon is designed to safely return items, a huge benefit that disappeared with NASA’s space shuttles. The vessel is the first U.S. craft to visit the station since the final shuttle flight last summer.

The unmanned capsule is carrying 1,000 pounds of supplies on this unprecedented test flight.

Two hours after the capture, the crew attached the Dragon to the space station as the congratulations poured in. They’ll start unpacking the capsule on Saturday.

“Now that a U.S. company has proven its ability to resupply the space station, it opens a new frontier for commercial opportunities in space — and new job creation opportunities right here in the U.S.,” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement.

After this test flight, SpaceX — officially known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — has a contract to make a dozen delivery runs. It is one of several companies vying for NASA’s cargo business and a chance to launch Americans from U.S. soil.

SpaceX launched the capsule from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday with its Falcon 9 rocket. On Thursday, the Dragon capsule came within 1½ miles of the space station in a practice fly-by. It returned to the neighborhood early Friday so Pettit, along with Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers could capture it with the station’s robot arm.

First, the capsule went through a series of stop-and-go demonstrations to prove it was under good operating control.

NASA ordered extra checks of the Dragon’s imaging systems as the capsule drew ever closer to the space station, putting the entire operation slightly behind schedule. At one point, SpaceX controllers ordered a retreat because of a problem with on-board tracking sensors.

Given that the Dragon is a brand new type of vehicle and this is a test flight, the space agency insisted on proceeding cautiously. A collision by vehicles traveling at orbital speed — 17,500 mph — could prove disastrous for the space station.

President Barack Obama is pushing commercial ventures in orbit so NASA can concentrate on grander destinations like asteroids and Mars. Obama’s chief scientific advisor, John Holdren, called Friday’s linkup “an achievement of historic scientific and technological.”

“It’s essential we maintain such competition and fully support this burgeoning and capable industry to get U.S. astronauts back on American launch vehicles as soon as possible,” he said in a statement.

Without the shuttle, NASA astronauts must go through Russia, an expensive and embarrassing situation for the U.S. after a half-century of orbital self-sufficiency. Once companies master supply runs, they hope to tackle astronaut ferry runs.

Musk, who founded SpaceX a decade ago and helped create PayPal, said he can have astronauts riding his Dragon capsules to orbit in three or four years.

The space station has been relying on Russian, Japanese and European cargo ships for supplies ever since the shuttles retired. None of those, however, can bring anything of value back; they’re simply loaded with trash and burn up in the atmosphere.

By contrast, the Dragon is designed to safely re-enter the atmosphere, parachuting into the ocean like the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules did back in the 1960s. Assuming all goes well Friday, the space station’s six-man crew will release the Dragon next Thursday after filling it with science experiments and equipment.

Going into Tuesday’s launch of this Dragon, NASA had contributed $381 million to SpaceX in seed money. The company has invested more than $1 billion in this commercial effort over the past 10 years.

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Online:

SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/

Thursday’s accomplishment “is a big confidence boost. Everyone’s very excited,” said SpaceX mission director John Couluris. After working all night and into the wee hours, he urged his team to go home and rest up for Friday. “It’s exciting to be an American and part of putting American spacecraft into orbit, and we’re very proud right now.”

NASA flight director Holly Ridings said the mood is upbeat on her side as well, but noted “there’s still a lot of really new things that the teams need to perform and the vehicles, frankly, need to perform” on Friday.

“This is still definitely a demonstration flight,” she said at a news briefing.

As the pre-dawn hours of Thursday unfolded, the space station astronauts struggled with bad computer monitors and camera trouble as the Dragon zoomed toward them, but the problem did not hold up the operation. Indeed, all of the tests appeared to go well.

The astronauts successfully turned on Dragon’s strobe light by remote control, but could not see it because of the sun glare and distance of several miles. The Dragon finally popped into camera view about 10 minutes later, appearing as a bright speck of light against the blackness of space, near the Earth’s blue horizon. The two solar wings were clearly visible as the Dragon drew closer.

“Can nicely see the vehicle,” Dutch spaceman Andre Kuipers said.

SpaceX’s near-term objective is to help stockpile the space station, joining Russia, Europe and Japan in resupply duties. In three or four more years, however, the company run by the billionaire who co-founded PayPal, Elon Musk, hopes to be launching station astronauts.

It is the cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s strategy for NASA: turning over orbital flights to private business so the space agency can concentrate on destinations farther afield, like asteroids and Mars. Several U.S. companies are vying for the opportunity.

Obama called Musk on Wednesday, a day after Dragon’s flawless launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard the company’s Falcon 9 rocket.

“The President just called to say congrats. Caller ID was blocked, so at first I thought it was a telemarketer,” Musk said via Twitter early Thursday. He ended his tweet with a smiley emoticon.

Musk monitored Thursday’s operation from the SpaceX Mission Control in Hawthorne, Calif., where the company is based.

On Friday morning, two of the space station’s six astronauts, Kuipers and Donald Pettit, will use the space station’s robot arm to grab the Dragon and attach it to the complex. The crew will have just under a week to unload the contents before releasing the spacecraft for re-entry next Thursday. It is the only supply ship designed to return to Earth with experiments and equipment; the others burn up in the atmosphere.

SpaceX wants to provide regular service at much faster flight rates than the government-sponsored cargo ships, Couluris said. Two more supply trips are planned by year’s end.

The space shuttles used to be the primary means of getting things to and from the space station. Shuttle Discovery is now a museum relic, with Endeavour and Atlantis soon to follow.

Aboard the bell-shaped Dragon — 19 feet tall and 12 feet across — is food, clothes, batteries and other space station gear.

The space station and Dragon may be visible to Earthlings in select locations in the pre-dawn hours Friday, while flying tandem just prior to their linkup 250 miles above the planet. Among the many U.S. cities with viewing opportunities if skies are clear: New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Jacksonville, Fla.

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Online:

SpaceX: http://www.spacex.com

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/c3po/home/

NASA sighting list: http://spaceflight1.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/