SpaceX launched the Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft on Saturday to resupply the International Space Station on the 26th commercial mission, according to a live stream of the launch on the NASA website, Trend reports citing TASS.
A Falcon-9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at about 2:20 p.m. ET on Saturday (10:20 p.m. Moscow time). The rocket is expected to dock to the ISS on November 27 at 3:30 p.m. Moscow time.
The original launch date had been scheduled for November 22, but was scrubbed due to bad weather.
Besides SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon, supplies are delivered to the ISS by Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft. However, Cygnus rockets burn up when reentering the atmosphere on their return to the Earth, along with the rubbish they take away from the ISS.
Currently, there are seven crew members onboard the ISS: Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin (who is TASS’ special correspondent at the ISS) and Anna Kikina, NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio as well as JAXA astronaut Koichi Wakata.