Overview
- The Falcon 9, which lifted off Friday at 6:05 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral after bad weather delays earlier in the week, is sending nearly 6,500 pounds of cargo and experiments to the station.
- The first stage touched down at Landing Zone 40 near the launch pad less than eight minutes after liftoff.
- Dragon is slated to dock at the station’s Harmony forward port around 7 a.m. EDT on Sunday.
- The shipment includes a wood‑based scaffold to study bone growth, research on red blood cells and the spleen in space, a charged‑particle sensor to study space weather that can affect power grids and satellites, and an instrument to measure sunlight reflected by Earth and the Moon.
- The Cargo Dragon capsule, serial C209, is on its sixth flight and is set to return in mid‑June with time‑sensitive samples for a splashdown off California.