When the SpaceX-3 cargo resupply mission launched to the International Space Station April 18, an experiment designed by David A. Weitz, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., was among the cargo headed to space.
The experiment, located inside the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, arrived at the orbiting outpost yesterday morning at 10:06 a.m. EDT.
The experiment, Advanced Colloids Experiment-Microscopy-2 (ACE-M-2), investigates the behavior of liquids and gases near the critical point, or the point at which there is no distinct boundary between the two phases. It uses a new microscope to record micro-scale events on short time scales, while previous experiments observed large-scale behavior over many weeks.
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 4:58 p.m. EDT.
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 7 a.m. Wednesday, April 16. The capsule is scheduled to remain attached to the station unit May 18. It then will return to Earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast 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
Caroline M. Perry
Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
617-496-1351
cperry@seas.harvard.edu