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A new model of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is scheduled to make its first flight to orbit Sunday when a Falcon 9 rocket lifts a Dragon 2 crammed with provides towards the International Space Station.
The new Dragon can carry 50 p.c extra science payloads in contrast with the earlier model, in accordance to SpaceX. The launch is the 21st for Elon Musk’s rocket firm as half of its industrial resupply providers (CRS) contract with NASA.
In addition to provides for the astronauts and station, CRS-21 will carry a number of experiments to the ISS, together with the first COVID-19 drug analysis experiment in space. A quantity of organic investigations will take benefit of applied sciences like tissue-on-a-chip and mind organoids, which can be utilized to simulate human tissue and document the way it responds to microgravity.
Another experiment on board is Bioasteroid, which goals to assist decide whether or not organisms comparable to fungus could possibly be used to assist extract precious substances like uncommon earth metals from asteroids to mine them and even maintain bases on different worlds.
“We’re going to be looking at whether those microbes can get elements we’d really like to use in industry from the surface and interior of asteroids,” Charles Cockell, principal investigator for Bioasteroid, explains within the NASA video beneath.
Also flying on the Dragon is a new airlock module from Nanoracks that is comparable to a Japanese airlock already on the ISS, however considerably bigger. The new infrastructure might enable for cubesats or different payloads to be deployed into space from the space station.
The Falcon 9 booster lifting the Dragon 2 shall be making its fourth flight and may land on a drone ship within the Atlantic a number of minutes after blasting off. The Dragon ought to dock with the ISS roughly 24 hours after launch.
The launch was set for Saturday however has since been delayed by unhealthy climate to Sunday, Dec. 6, at 8:17 a.m. PT (11:17 a.m. ET) from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Whenever the mission will get off the bottom, we’ll be certain to embed the livestream so you possibly can watch proper right here.
(This story has not been edited by Newslivenation employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)