The crew of the International Space Station welcomes the latest version of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for orbit on Monday. Dragon 2 is making its first cargo flight to orbit following the liftoff above the Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday morning.
A capsule filled with supplies to the International Space Station grew as part of the 21st launch under the Commercial Resilience Services Agreement between Elon Musk’s Rocket Company and NASA. His arrival will be broadcast on NASA TV at 8:30 a.m. PT, with docking scheduled for 10:30 a.m. PT. You can see below.
This The new, upgraded Dragon can carry 50% more science payload Comparison with previous versions according to SpaceX. This version was previously sent to astronauts during Demo-2 and to the ISS Crew-1 mission For NASA, however, this is the first Dragon 2 cargo mission.
In addition to supplies for astronauts and the station, CRS-21 is conducting several experiments for the ISS, including The first COVID-19 drug research experiment In space A number of biological investigations will take advantage of technologies such as tissue-no-chip and brain organoids, which can be used to mimic human tissues and record how they respond to microorganisms.
Another experiment on board is the biosteroids, the purpose of which is to help determine whether organisms such as fungi can be used to extract valuable substances such as rare earth metals from asteroids or to sustain the foundations of other worlds.
“We’re looking to see if those microbes can get the elements they want to use in industry from the surfaces and interiors of asteroids,” Charles Cockle, chief investigator at Byster Aster Road, said in a NASA video below.
Flying on the Dragon is a new Arol module module from Nanorex that is similar to the Japanese Air Lock already on the ISS, but significantly larger. New infrastructure may allow cubets or other payloads to be deployed into space from the space station.
The Falcon 9 booster that picked up Dragon 2 from the Florida launch pad at 8:17 a.m. was making its fourth flight to PT Sunday and then flew to the Atlantic on the course I Still Love You with a fourth landing.
The Dragon capsule is set to detach from the ISS in about a month and will bring many new scientific data to Earth by flooding the Atlantic Ocean.
