At 4:10pm ET Wednesday, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon capsule to the International Space Station, the sixth under its contract with NASA. At 6:55 a.m. today, the Dragon was successfully berted to the station. On board the Dragon capsule are supplies for the astronauts as well as some fascinating scientific and commercial cargo.
Here are a few highlights of what the space station's astrounauts will start unpacking on Saturday:
Mousetronauts and Synthetic Muscle
The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), which manages the U.S. National Lab on board the International Space Station, has several research projects going up, all of them involving commercial partners.
One interesting one is a follow-up research experiment with Novartis, which involves sending up "mousetronauts" for a prolonged, longitudinal study about how microgravity impacts their bones and muscles. It's hoped, CASIS scientist Mike Roberts told me, that the ability to study the degradation of bone and muscle on a molecular level could lead to the development for medicines to treat osteoporosis, muscle-wasting disease, and other conditions.
Another experiment making its way onto the station involves synthetic muscles being created by the company Ras Labs. The synthetic muscles are being developed in the hopes of developing better robots to do work in space.
"We're looking at robotics to do work where the crew can’t," said Roberts. "We want to know how this materials will be effected in the harsh environment of space."
A Coffee Machine
One very important piece of equipment coming to the station, at least as far as the astronauts are concerned, is the ISSPresso. This machine, a joint venture of Italian aerospace company Argotec and Italian coffee maker Lavazza, will actually brew hot coffee for astronauts, who until now had to rely a dry powder mixed with water to serve as "coffee."
Italian astronaut and space station resident Samantha Cristoforetti tweeted her appreciation for the espresso machine with an epic Star Trek reference:
Imaging Satellites
On board Dragon are also 14 imaging satellites from Planet Labs. The small satellites will be launched from Nanoracks' satellite deployement system. Once in orbit, they'll be taking pictures of the Earth's surface for use by Planet's customers. The company has already placed over 100 small satellites into orbit.
"[W]e’re inching closer to daily imaging of our dynamic planet," Planet's Rachel Holm wrote in a company blog post.
A Crowdsourced Garden
One more interesting experiment is coming from a group of three sisters, MaryAnn, Lillith, and Adia Buwala, who've dubbed themselves "Chicks In Space." The group successfully crowdsourced over $15,000 to fund their research experiment for the space station. Their experiment, "the Garden of ETON," is a hydroponic garden utilizing a NanoRacks lab through their Dream-Up program. The group aims to show that hydroponics can work in microgravity.
If their design is successful, the young women hope their project can be used to develop further hydroponics projects in space, which would enable more fresh produce to be grown on the ISS and future space habitats.
