A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule will arrive on the International Space Station early Tuesday morning (June 6), and you possibly can watch the motion live.
The robotic Dragon launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Monday (June 5) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It’s schedule to dock on the space-facing port of the orbiting lab’s Harmony module on Tuesday at 5:50 a.m. EDT (0950 GMT), ending an 18-hour orbital chase.
You may watch the off-Earth rendezvous here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Docking coverage will start at 4:15 a.m. EDT (0815 GMT) on Tuesday.
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The present Dragon mission known as CRS-28, since it’s the twenty eighth flight SpaceX is flying for NASA under a series of Business Resupply Services contracts.
The capsule is hauling about 7,000 kilos (3,175 kilograms) of supplies, scientific experiments and other gear to the International Space Station. Amongst that hardware are two more International Space Station Roll Out Solar Arrays, or iROSAs, which might be installed on the orbiting outpost’s exterior by spacewalking astronauts to enhance its power output.
Getting all of the iROSAs up and running will boost the ISS’ electricity generation by 20% to 30%, NASA officials have said.
The science gear features a technology demonstration for autonomous space station docking systems called CLINGER and Genes In Space-10, which can test a method to measure the length of telomeres in microgravity.
Telomeres are regions of DNA at the tip of a chromosome. Telomeres shorten as an individual gets older, a phenomenon related to the onset of some cancers and other diseases, in addition to general age-related decline.
Dragon is predicted to remain on the ISS for 21 days on CRS-28, then come back all the way down to Earth for a parachute-aided ocean splashdown.
Dragon is the one cargo craft capable of creating such secure returns. The opposite two currently operational robotic freighters — Russia’s Progress vehicle and Cygnus, which is built by American company Northop Grumman — are designed to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere when their time in orbit is completed.