Final solar wings on their way: Dragon cargo ship CRS-35 launches to ISS
A Falcon 9 sent about 2,860 kilograms of cargo to the space station on Tuesday, including the last pair of new solar wings and hardware for making artificial retinas.
Archive image · Photo: NASA Johnson Space Center / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
An uncrewed Cargo Dragon lifted off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Tuesday morning local time, bound for the International Space Station. It is SpaceX's 35th resupply flight for NASA. The first stage was flying for the eighth time and landed near the launch pad less than seven and a half minutes after liftoff, Spaceflight Now reported. Docking at the Harmony module is planned for Thursday around 11 a.m. EDT.
The capsule's unpressurized trunk carries two roll-out solar arrays built by Redwire, the fourth and final pair of their kind for the ISS. According to Spaceflight Now, each wing can deliver more than 20 kilowatts for more than ten years. They will be installed during a series of spacewalks. A version of the technology is also set to power NASA's SR-1 Freedom reactor, scheduled to launch in 2028.
In all, Dragon carries more than 40 studies. They include hardware to manufacture artificial retinas in microgravity, 3D heart tissue models for drug testing and materials for a new type of glass. Such glass could advance optics and electronics on Earth, said Liz Warren, deputy chief scientist in NASA's ISS Office. The freighter will stay for about a month before returning samples to Earth.