Elon Musk’s SpaceX is about to launch a new batch of food supplies, experiments, and science to the International Space Station (ISS). The 28th commercial resupply mission will blast off Monday to the flying laboratory on the company’s Falcon-9 rocket. And this time, it’s bringing a unique experiment designed by students. It’s part of the Genes in Space program from the University of Florida and could help scientists better understand how plant seeds can pass down genetic changes when grown in microgravity.
The CRS-28 mission will also include solar arrays to power the ISS and more food. The Dragon spacecraft will travel to the ISS over a 42-hour voyage.
SpaceX is at the forefront of a shift in space exploration. Private companies are now launching more cargo missions to the ISS than government-sponsored ones. As a result, commercial launches have outnumbered government-sponsored ones for the first time in history.
It’s been a busy year for SpaceX. The company is working on a giant rocket that it hopes to use for commercial missions and eventually to send astronauts to Mars. But it has sometimes gone differently than planned. The company suffered a couple of setbacks in 2016 when a Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the pad and the Crew Dragon capsule blew up during a test fire on the ground in April. However, those incidents were not as severe as in December when the Starship rocket ran out of fuel during a test flight and crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Texas. No one was hurt in the crash, and the rocket survived, but it was a significant embarrassment for NASA and SpaceX.
Despite those setbacks, Musk remains confident that the company will soon be ready for crewed missions. He’s planning to fly the company’s Starship spacecraft with Japanese billionaire Maezawa Yusaku and several artists in 2023. It will also be used for flights around the Moon as part of the company’s Lunar Exploration Venture and to eventually land settlers on the red planet.
But for now, it’s all about resuming operations. The company hopes to have a successful test of the Falcon-9’s re-use capability this week. That will include sending the spacecraft back to Earth after its return trip, landing it on a drone ship in the Atlantic, and then sending it up for another round of refueling.
SpaceX was initially slated to launch the mission on Sunday, but it was postponed at the last minute. The company says high winds in the rocket recovery zone were to blame. The launch has been rescheduled to Monday at 11:47 a.m. ET. It will be broadcast live on SpaceX’s website. Afterward, the company will attempt to recover the Falcon’s second stage using its drone-ship Axiom SpaceX-1, currently out in the Atlantic. If successful, the droneship will land in the water near Cape Canaveral, Florida. The SpaceX website also has a link to the live feed of the Falcon’s return journey.
