SpaceX's CRS-35 Dragon lifts off for the space station with the final pair of new solar arrays
Falcon 9 launched NASA's 35th SpaceX resupply mission at 6:33 a.m. EDT Tuesday from Cape Canaveral with more than 6,300 pounds of cargo. Dragon is scheduled to dock to the station's Harmony module at 11 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 15.
Photo: NASA/John Kraus, public domain
NASA's SpaceX 35th commercial resupply mission lifted off at 6:33 a.m. EDT on Tuesday, October 13, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, NASA said. The Dragon spacecraft is carrying more than 6,300 pounds of supplies and hardware to the International Space Station.
Dragon is scheduled to dock autonomously at 11 a.m. on Thursday, October 15, to the space-facing port of the station's Harmony module, with NASA coverage of rendezvous and docking beginning at 9:15 a.m. Its cargo includes the final pair of International Space Station Roll-Out Solar Arrays, which NASA says will complete the station's power system augmentation. Astronauts are to install them during spacewalks planned for later this fall.
New experiments on board include hardware to manufacture artificial retinas in microgravity, 3D heart tissue models for large-scale drug testing, materials to study how a new type of glass forms in microgravity, and brain organoids that could reveal treatment targets for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis, according to NASA.
Dragon is to remain at the station until mid-November, when it will return to Earth with time-critical research and cargo, splashing down off the coast of California.