NASA has launched a set of scientific instruments and experiments on the SpaceX Dragon capsule as part of its International Space Station resupply mission. The space agency said the spacecraft lifted off with over 6,000 pounds of supply on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday at 9:29 p.m. Eastern time.
The capsule docked at the forward port of the orbiting laboratory’s Harmony module on Tuesday.
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New ISS Experiments
Scientists on the space station regularly conduct experiments in microgravity across a range of disciplines, from space science to biology and biotechnology.
As part of the SpaceX 31st commercial resupply mission, NASA sent the Space Entanglement and Annealing Quantum Experiment, or SEAQUE, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California.
SEAQUE is a technology demonstration that will explore how quantum technologies can improve communications across vast distances. If successful, the experiment may pave the way for quantum communication systems globally and in space.
The commercial resupply mission also brought to the ISS the COronal Diagnostic EXperiment, a study on solar winds. The CODEX uses a solar coronagraph that blocks out sunlight to reveal details on its outer atmosphere.
NASA said the experiment aims to understand the elements that heat up solar wind to a million degrees hotter than the surface of the Sun and catapults it outward to travel across the solar system at almost a million miles per hour.
Research on how space impacts Antarctic moss and different materials also arrived at the ISS.
SpaceX Launch to the ISS
The mission marks the 11th SpaceX launch under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract. The first-stage Falcon 9 booster and the Dragon capsule used during the flight previously supported four other missions.
Dragon will remain docked to the ISS for a month and will return to Earth in December with research and cargo. It is expected to splash down off the coast of Florida.