{"id":10252,"date":"2023-11-11T00:04:27","date_gmt":"2023-11-10T16:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-launches-dragon-cargo-ship-to-space-station\/"},"modified":"2023-11-11T00:04:27","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T16:04:27","slug":"spacex-launches-dragon-cargo-ship-to-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-launches-dragon-cargo-ship-to-space-station\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX launches Dragon cargo ship to space station"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_64397\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-64397\" style=\"width: 678px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64397\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/20231109-Streak-from-beach-Michael.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"678\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/20231109-Streak-from-beach-Michael.jpg 678w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/20231109-Streak-from-beach-Michael-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 678px) 100vw, 678px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-64397\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A long-exposure from the beach at Cape Canaveral captures the first-stage and second-stage burns, plus the entry and landing burns of the first-stage. Image: Michael Cain\/Spaceflight Now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Lighting up the night sky, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaked into orbit in spectacular fashion Thursday, kicking off a 32-hour rendezvous with the International Space Station to deliver 6,500 pounds of research gear, crew supplies and needed equipment.<\/p>\n<p>Also on board: fresh fruit, cheese and pizza kits and \u201csome fun holiday treats for the crew, like chocolate, pumpkin spice cappuccino, rice cakes, turkey, duck, quail, seafood, cranberry sauce and mochi,\u201d said Dana Weigel, deputy space station program manager at the Johnson Space Center.<\/p>\n<p>Liftoff from historic pad 39 at the Kennedy Space Center came at 8:28 p.m. EDT, roughly the moment Earth\u2019s rotation carried the pad directly into the plane of the space station\u2019s orbit. That\u2019s a requirement for rendezvous missions with targets moving at more than 17,000 mph.<\/p>\n<p>The climb to space went smoothly, and the Dragon was released to fly on its own about 12 minutes after liftoff. If all goes well, the spacecraft will catch up with the space station Saturday morning and stand by for capture by the lab\u2019s robot arm.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/UasA6SVOeng\" width=\"678\" height=\"381\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The launching marked SpaceX\u2019s 29th Cargo Dragon flight to the space station and the second mission for capsule C-211. The first stage booster, also making its second flight, flew itself back to the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to chalk up SpaceX\u2019s 39th Florida touchdown and its 243rd overall.<\/p>\n<p>But the primary goal of the flight is to deliver research gear and equipment to the space station.<\/p>\n<p>Among the equipment being delivered to the station is an experimental high-speed laser communications package designed to send and receive data encoded in infrared laser beams at much higher rates than possible with traditional radio systems.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is using optical communication to use lower power and smaller hardware for sending data packages back from the space station to Earth that are even larger and faster than our capabilities today,\u201d said Meghan Everett, a senior scientist with the space station program.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_64401\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-64401\" style=\"width: 678px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64401\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/20231109-CRS-29-Launch-Adam.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"678\" height=\"452\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/20231109-CRS-29-Launch-Adam.jpg 678w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/20231109-CRS-29-Launch-Adam-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 678px) 100vw, 678px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-64401\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Falcon 9 rocket soars from pad 39A on a space station resupply mission. Image: Adam Bernstein\/Spaceflight Now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThis optical communication could hugely benefit the research that we are already doing on the space station by allowing our scientists to see the data faster, turn results around faster and even help our medical community by sending down medical packets of data.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The equipment will be tested for six months as a \u201ctechnology demonstration.\u201d If it works as expected, it may be used as an operational communications link.<\/p>\n<p>Another externally mounted instrument being delivered aboard the Dragon is the Atmospheric Waves Experiment, or AWE. It will capture 68,000 infrared images per day to study gravity waves at the boundary between the discernible atmosphere and space \u2014 waves powered by the up-and-down interplay between gravity and buoyancy.<\/p>\n<p>As the waves interact with the ionosphere, \u201cthey affect communications, navigation and tracking systems,\u201d said Jeff Forbes, deputy principal investigator at the University of Colorado.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_64404\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-64404\" style=\"width: 678px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64404\" src=\"http:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/20231109-Booster-Landing-Michael.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"678\" height=\"432\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/20231109-Booster-Landing-Michael.jpg 678w, https:\/\/spaceflightnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/20231109-Booster-Landing-Michael-300x191.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 678px) 100vw, 678px\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-64404\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The first stage booster returns to Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral. Image: Michael Cain\/Spaceflight Now.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cAWE will make an important, first pioneering step to measure the waves entering space from the atmosphere. And we hope to be able to link these observations with the weather at higher altitudes in the ionosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And an experiment carried out inside the station will use 40 rodents to \u201cbetter understand the combined effects of spaceflight, nutrition and environmental stressors on (female) reproductive health and bone health,\u201d Everett said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was some previous research that suggested there were changes in hormone receptors and endocrine function that negatively impacted female reproductive health,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we\u2019re hoping the results of this study can be used to inform female astronaut health during long-duration spaceflight and even female reproductive health here on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A long-exposure from the beach at Cape Canaveral captures the first-stage and second-stage burns, plus the entry and landing burns of the first-stage. Image: Michael Cain\/Spaceflight Now. Lighting up the night sky, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket streaked into orbit in spectacular fashion Thursday, kicking off a 32-hour rendezvous with the International Space Station to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}