SpaceX made a remarkable history by successfully delivering the Dragon cargo ship to the International Space Station(ISS). The shipping process was accomplished at 250 miles above the ground. At the fist phase of the journey, Dragon was going through some navigational glitch. Later, on Thursday Dragon finally able to reach ISS.
Dragon started it’s journey on Sunday from NASA’s launch pad 39A on Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On Wednesday, astronauts found some errors in GPS which prevented the capsule to be attached to the station’s big robotic arms. The 23-feet-long space capsule was packed with 5,500 pounds(~2.5 Tons) of supplies which includes food rations, space station repair equipment, and science investigations designed to monitor Earth’s ozone layer.
According to the report by Spaceflight Now, the attachment process was executed at 250 miles above while it was sailing over the northwest coast of Australia. French astronaut Thomas Pesquet who was the lead operator of the robotic arm said in a statement,“Congratulations Dragon on a successful journey from Earth and now welcome on board”. After getting successfully attached to ISS, Mission Control replied on the radio,“ Sorry about the delays.Now the real work starts”.
The St.Augustine Record reported that the station will receive another shipment from Russia on Friday. There will be six crew of astronauts, they were instructed to open the capsule as soon as possible to retrieve sensitive pieces of equipment for science experiments.
There would be 20 wounded mice at the top of the crew’s unloading list. Scientists sent those mice to test their wound healing capabilities. Those mice were surgically injured to check how fast they can recover their wounds in micro-gravity. Scientists would perform the same experiment with 20 other wounded mice on the ground to compare the result with ISS.
Dragon also supplied a container of highly infectious MRSA bacteria which is protected with a triple layer of protection so it doesn’t get loose up there. Those bacteria colonies will help scientists for studying lightning and the Earth’s ozone layer. Before deployment Dragon will stay for a month. It will bring back science samples and other items. Dragon is specially engineered to return back safely to earth, all of the other capsule carriers were burned up during the re-entry to Earth.
