When the SpaceX-3 cargo resupply mission launched to the International Space Station April 18, an experiment designed by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was among the cargo headed to space.
The experiment, Biotube-MICRO, investigates the potential for magnetic fields to orient plant roots as they grow in microgravity. Brassica rapa seedlings will be grown on the space station in the presence of magnets with about 50 times the strength of refrigerator magnets to see whether the orientation of the amyloplasts or other factors induce curvature in roots as they form.
SpaceX-3 is NASA’s third contracted resupply mission to the space station by U.S. company SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif. SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft launched atop the company’s Falcon rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 2:25 p.m. CDT.
SpaceX developed its Dragon capsule, the only cargo spacecraft currently servicing the space station with the capability to return cargo back to Earth, with NASA and now successfully has completed three missions to the orbiting outpost. Expedition 39 crew members captured the SpaceX-3 Dragon using the station’s robotic arm at 9:06 a.m. CDT Sunday, April 20. The capsule is scheduled to remain attached to the station until May 18. It then will return to Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. It will return samples from scientific investigations currently underway aboard the space station.
The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has had continuous human occupation since November 2000. In that time it has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA’s next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.
For more information about the SpaceX-3 mission and the International Space Station, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/station
Joshua Buck
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
jbuck@nasa.gov
Susan Anderson
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
susan.h.anderson@nasa.gov
Kathleen Thames / Charlie Bier
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
337-482-6397 / 337-482-6477
kat@louisiana.edu / charlie@louisiana.edu