First SpaceX Dragon Cargo Flight Ends With a Splash After a nearly flawless nine-day routine, the Dragon stuck the landing, too. The first commercial mission to ferry supplies into space ended successfully Thursday when a cargo capsule known as the Dragon fell to earth on target in the Pacific Ocean off Mexico, NASA officials said. Tethered to three large parachutes, the unmanned capsule, which had carried about 1,100 pounds of food, water, clothing and equipment to the International Space Station, hit the water at the relatively gentle speed of about 10 miles an hour at 8:42 a.m. local time. It came down about 560 miles west of Baja California, witnessed by technicians from the company that built and flew it, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX. They were to load the capsule aboard a barge and haul it back to Long Beach, Calif. "This really couldn't have gone better," Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, said at a televised news conference from the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. I'm overwhelmed with joy. It's been 10 years, and to have it go so well is incredibly satisfying. The remote-controlled Dragon had separated from the space station about seven hours before splashdown, eventually firing rockets to slow it enough so that it would descend through the atmosphere. Before separation, the station's astronauts loaded it with about 1,400 pounds of used equipment, experiment samples and garbage. With the success of what amounted to a trial run for the spacecraft - there were only a few minor problems during the mission, which began when the Dragon was launched atop a SpaceX rocket from Florida on May 22 - the company is now poised to begin regular supply missions, with much bigger payloads, to the space station later this year. Since the space shuttle program ended last year, the station has been resupplied only by Russian rockets. So far, SpaceX has been the most successful participant in the government's long-term plan to shift the business of spaceflight to private enterprise, with NASA acting only as managers. The agency's $1.6 billion contract with the company for 12 supply flights still awaits final approval, but Alan J. Lindenmoyer, NASA's manager for commercial spaceflight, said at the news conference that he expected the approval to come quickly. "We became your customer today," Mr. Lindenmoyer said. Mr. Musk said that the first regular cargo mission could come by late summer. SpaceX also hopes to win a NASA competition to ferry astronauts to the space station, using a larger rocket. And Mr. Musk talks often of an even grander goal: sending humans to Mars. The completion of the Dragon flight, Mr. Musk said, "really shows that commercial spaceflight can be successful."