A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule rendezvoused with the International Space Station (ISS) Saturday, July 16, delivering more than 5,800 pounds (2,630 kg) of supplies to the orbiting lab.
robotic dragon Launched in two Falcon 9 phases A rocket Thursday night (July 14) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Falcon 9 Dragon was delivered to low Earth orbit and the rocket’s first stage returned to successfully land on SpaceX’s A Shortfall of Gravitas unmanned craft.
The dragon’s orbital hunt ended Saturday: The capsule docked with the International Space Station at 11:21 a.m. EDT (1521 GMT), while the two spacecraft hovered 267 miles (430 kilometers) above. over the South Atlantic.
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The current mission is SpaceX’s 25th cargo flight to the International Space Station for NASA, so it’s known as CRS-25. (CRS stands for Commercial Resupply Services). The number has grown at a slow but steady rate of about two a year since the company’s first operational cargo mission to the International Space Station in 2012.
SpaceX’s overall launch rate is of course much higher: the CRS-25 launch was the 30th Falcon 9 Launch so far this year. In contrast, SpaceX It has only launched 31 missions in 2021. According to Benji Reed, senior director of human spaceflight at SpaceX, the company is preparing to double that number by the end of this year.
“It kind of just kind of blew my mind,” Reed told reporters on a conference call shortly after its Thursday night launch. Reed added: “The belief that we have already launched three Dragons to the station this year is fantastic, including the first commercial mission to the station and the NASA crew mission as well. »
The other two Dragon missions that launched this year – both in April – have been outfitted. a called ax 1, carrying paying customers to the orbital lab on a flight hosted by Axiom Space in Houston. was the other Crew 4SpaceX’s fourth contracted astronaut mission for NASA.
About half its weight the Dragon Transferred to the International Space Station on a CRS-25 dedicated to scientific research. The mission contributes to nearly 40 ongoing research projects in the orbiting lab, NASA officials said, and dropped a handful of others.
A study, from the European Space Agency and the University of Florence in Italy, examines the effects of microgravity On the healing process of stitched wounds. Another study from the University of California, San Francisco will examine the relationship between the immune system, aging and the body’s ability to heal itself. An investigation is also underway to study a special type of biopolymer concrete, which could facilitate the search for future construction materials on the Moon.
The EMIT experiment – an acronym for Investigating the Source of Earth’s Metal Surface Dust – will be loaded into the Dragon Box – from storage using the International Space Station’s robotic arm and mounted on the ExPRESS 1 logistics carrier, a container exposed external payload used for experiments and storage. EMIT will spend the next year studying the mineral composition of dust in arid regions of Earth to help scientists better understand the planet’s global climate system.
Some of the CRS-25 cargo, although not part of other ongoing investigations, serves as a symbol of the science that sustains daily life on the space station – and also highlights how much we can harness a science lab in space. Dina Contella, director of NASA operations integration for the International Space Station, highlighted other instruments packed aboard the Dragon.
“One of the items is an emergency pump, which is essential for the toilets,” Contella said during Thursday’s press call. Dosing pumps are used to treat urine before filtering it and collecting it to turn it back into drinking water – in case you forgot there was no water in space and astronauts had to drink their own recycled urine.
“We’ve also launched saltwater processor collection bags,” Contella said. “These allow us to recover more water from the effort of urinating. » [than] normal treatment. Thus, a new bladder increases our ability to collect as much water as possible. He added that two filters for the station’s drinking water dispensers were also included in the Dragon Manifesto.
Dragon is expected to remain anchored to the International Space Station for about a month and be stocked with station equipment before returning to Earth in a haze of water off the coast of Florida in mid-August.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated at 11:55 a.m. EDT on July 16 with news of the successful docking.
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