A SpaceX cargo capsule successfully docked with the International Space Station Thursday morning, 261 statute miles above northeastern China.
The SpaceX-27 cargo craft was launched Tuesday on a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center to deliver more than 15 ISS National Lab-sponsored payloads to the space station, including tissue chip research, advanced materials projects, technology demonstrations and physical sciences studies, according to the ISS National Laboratory.
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Docking occurred at 7:31 a.m. ET, ahead of the originally-scheduled 7:52 a.m. autonomous maneuver. See it again in the video player below.
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One of the uncrewed Dragon spacecraft’s experiments will examine how the heart changes in space as part of a collaboration between the National Center for Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health and the ISS National Laboratory’s Tissue Chips in Space initiative.
“Spaceflight causes many significant changes in the human body,” said Liz Warren, associate program scientist at the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS). “We expect tissue chips in space to behave much like an astronaut’s body, experiencing the same kind of rapid change.”
During a news conference on Monday, NASA officials said that 6,300 pounds of supplies would be onboard, including NASA’s HUNCH Ball Clamp Monopod — a student-manufactured project that can make filming in space easier — and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Tanpopo-5 investigation, which studies the origin, transportation and survival of life in space and on extraterrestrial planets.
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