After Friday’s launch, SpaceX landed the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage on a ship down range in the Atlantic Ocean.
Advertisement
A report published by ABC Australia informed, “The cargo also contains Chinese cabbage seeds which astronauts will grow in space, and lab mice that will test whether certain drugs can help prevent muscle and bone loss in microgravity”.
The primary consignment of the ship was to bring 7,000 pounds of important supplies to the crew on the ISS which is the 8th of up to 20 missions to the ISS that SpaceX is contracted to fly for NASA.
The state-of-the-art Expandable Activity Module, which was provided by Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace, is a prototype scientists hope will play a pivotal role in sending future astronauts to the moon and Mars.
Astronauts on the International Space Station will soon get to test a new zone on the outpost – an inflatable room. SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk argued that the same rocket booster is expected to be put to use 10 more times; he also said that SpaceX is able to save millions of dollars in each launch by recycling rocket booster systems.
Later this year, SpaceX plans to plans to start launching rockets about every two weeks from Florida and California as the company tackles satellite-delivery orders worth some $10 billion, company officials said.
“With the arrival of Dragon, the space station ties the record for most vehicles on station at one time – six.” said NASA.
“The rocket had ideal booster vertical landing on a floating platform eight minutes and 35 seconds after it was launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida”, reported Los Angeles Times. As usual, SpaceX will try to land the leftover booster on an ocean barge, something it’s yet to achieve for reusability, as a way to shave launch costs. It is the eighth time SpaceX performs a mission towards the ISS. With this launch, the Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Elon Musk resumed its re-supply flights for NASA after the June launch accident. US astronauts now have to hitch rides on Russian rockets.
The ship will stay docked at the space station for about a month before returning to Earth with scientific samples, some from Scott Kelly, who is about to complete his historic one-year turn in space.
“It looks like we caught a Dragon”, said Peake of the European Space Agency.
Advertisement
If that part of the mission is successful, it will be the company’s first trip to the space station since last April.
