The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully blasted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last night and is now en route to the International Space Station for its first official resupply mission.
The Falcon 9 lifted off at 8:35 p.m. Eastern Sunday, carrying the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. Dragon is expected to arrive at the ISS on Wednesday morning and be attached via the station's robotic arm at 7:22 a.m., according to NASA. It will remain there for 18 days before it splashes down in the Pacific Ocean upon its return.
"Just over one year after the retirement of the space shuttle, we have returned space station cargo resupply missions to U.S. soil and are bringing the jobs associated with this work back to America," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement. "The SpaceX launch tonight marks the official start of commercial resupply missions by American companies operating out of U.S. spaceports like the one right here in Florida."
NASA retired its space shuttle fleet last year after 30 years to focus on more deep space endeavors. Supply missions to the ISS were handed over to private contractors, but it's not as simple as gassing up a spacecraft and blasting off with a few supplies in the trunk.
Dragon is carrying 882 pounds of supplies to the ISS, including 260 pounds of crew supplies, 390 pounds of scientific research, 225 pounds of hardware, and several pounds of other supplies, NASA said. It will return to Earth with 1,673 pounds of cargo.Earlier this year, SpaceX completed a successful demo flightto the ISS in a mission that was heralded as a new era for space exploration. Today marks SpaceX's first, official journey to the ISS as part of its $1.6 billion contract to fly 12 missions to the ISS through 2016.
The fact that Dragon can bring things back to Earth from the ISS is critical for scientists studying the effects of a microgravity environment on certain projects. "The ability to return frozen samples is a first for this flight and will be tremendously beneficial to the station's research community," NASA said.
One experiment, for example, is looking at how microgravity affects the growth of cell walls in a plant called Arabidopsis. Plants tend to expend about 50 percent of their energy by basically holding themselves up, so "understanding how the genes that control this energy expenditure operate in microgravity could have implications for future genetically modified plants and food supply," NASA said.
SpaceX is not the only private firm that will travel to the ISS. Orbital Sciences is preparing for its own demo flight to the ISS in early 2013 as part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS).
For more, see video of the Falcon 9/Dragon liftoff below. Also check out PCMag's look back at the space shuttle program above.
For more from Chloe, follow her on Twitter @ChloeAlbanesius.
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