Did you hear the sonic booms?
That was SpaceX sending critical cargo to the ISS
Sonic booms sounded as far east as Orlando on Thursday evening as SpaceX sent more than 5,000 pounds of science experiments and crew supplies on a mission to the International Space Station.
The mission took off despite a bad weather forecast for the region that threatened to push the mission into August.
Weather had already thwarted SpaceX’s efforts on Wednesday to take off with the critical payload, but Elon Musk’s rocket company was successful on its second try Thursday.
The launch took off precisely at 6:01 p.m. from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s launch complex 40. About eight minutes after launch, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first-stage booster landed back at the Cape’s Landing Zone 1.
Sonic booms sounded shortly thereafter, carried an unusually far distance by the warm and humid conditions hovering over Central Florida.
The mission was the first time that SpaceX’s cargo spacecraft, Dragon, traveled to the ISS for the third time. It had previously flown on the company’s sixth and 13th resupply missions to the station. The booster on this mission was also previously flown
on SpaceX’s most recent resupply launch in May.
Thursday’s flight was SpaceX’s 18th under its contract with NASA to ferry supplies to the ISS, which currently has six astronauts onboard: Russian cosmonauts Alexey Ovchinin and Alexander Skvortsov, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA astronauts Nick Hague, Drew Morgan and Christina Koch.
When Dragon arrives at the space station on Saturday, Hague will robotically capture the capsule and Koch will serve as his backup. Dragon will spend about a month at the ISS before returning to Earth and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California. It’ll bring back 3,300 pounds of cargo.
Heading to space Thursday were 2,628 pounds of science experiments, as well as more than 500 pounds of crew supplies, and other vehicle hardware, computer resources and spacewalk equipment.
Among the most important components flying on the mission was NASA’s International Docking Adapter, which will allow the orbiting laboratory to accommodate two crew or cargo spacecraft at the same time. The adapter will make room for both SpaceX and Boeing, which are developing astronaut capsules for NASA under its Commercial Crew Program, to dock two vehicles at at time.
Merritt Island-based TechShot also sent the first bioprinter to space. The experiment will focus on printing cardiac-like tissue in space, a precursor to one day printing organs in microgravity.
Commercial companies also took part in the mission. Kids network Nickelodeon sent its green slime — famous for falling on contestants and celebrities, alike — for ISS video demonstrations to elementary- and middle school-age students about how fluids flow in microgravity.
Sports company Adidas will be testing aerodynamics with its experiment, looking at the spinning behavior of soccer balls in microgravity. And tire manufacturer Goodyear will be studying formations of silica, a key material used to produce tires, in space. The experiment hopes to find a new structure of silica that could produce more fuel-efficient tires that are easier also on the environment.