Cargo ship docks with International Space Station – Spaceflight Now

An unpiloted SpaceX cargo ship docked on the International Space Station early Monday, delivering greater than 5,000 kilos of apparatus and provides together with 1,500 tortillas, the crumb-free bread substitute for crews eating in weightlessness.

Launched Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station atop a Falcon 9 rocket, the cargo Dragon closed out a 28-hour rendezvous with an ahead-of-schedule docking on the lab’s ahead port at 7:05 a.m. EDT as the 2 spacecraft have been passing 260 miles above the Ivory Coast of Africa.

“We’d like to say thanks to everybody who made the cargo and loaded the cargo and launched the cargo,” radioed astronaut Mike Fincke from the area station. “It’s our job now to take care of it from here. We’ll do our very best for all the science that’s now aboard. Also, we very much appreciate the resupply.”

Along with delivering recent meals, crew provides, experiments and station {hardware}, the Dragon additionally introduced an add-on thruster package in its open trunk part that shall be used to assist enhance the area station’s altitude to offset the continued results of passage by the intense higher ambiance.

“The space station’s altitude slowly decays over time due to the thin amount of atmosphere still at our altitude,” stated Bill Spetch, ISS operations integration supervisor on the Johnson Space Center. “To counteract that drag, we must occasionally raise the altitude of the ISS.”

The Russians deal with nearly all of these re-boost operations, delivering the wanted propellants and periodically firing thrusters aboard Progress cargo ships and the station itself.

“With the addition of the boost trunk on this mission, Dragon will also provide this ability to maintain the station’s altitude,” Spetch stated. “The boost kit will help sustain the orbiting lab’s altitude starting in September with a series of burns planned periodically throughout the fall of 2025.”

As for the tortillas, Spetch stated they’re commonplace fare for area station astronauts.

“We fly tortillas because … other breads and things like that have too many crumbs and things of that nature (that float away in weightlessness), so you can’t actually maintain it in orbit,” he stated. “Tortillas are a great substitute for that.”