Crew Gets Ready for Cargo Dragon after Visitors Leave Station

SpaceX has rolled out its Falcon 9 rocket with the Cargo Dragon vehicle attached to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Falcon 9 is due to lift off at 5:06 a.m. EST on Tuesday placing the Cargo Dragon into orbit for a docking at the International Space Station at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

Expedition 66 Flight Engineers Raja Chari and Thomas Marshburn of NASA will be on duty monitoring the Cargo Dragon’s automated docking to the Harmony module’s space-facing port. Dragon is delivering about 6,500 pounds crew supplies and new science experiments including a cancer treatment study and a handheld bioprinter. Live launch coverage begins at 4:45 a.m. on Tuesday on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

The orbiting lab has returned to its occupancy rate of seven crew members after three visitors departed and returned to Earth on Sunday. Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin led spaceflight participants Yusaku Maezawa and Yozo Hirano inside the Soyuz MS-20 crew ship when they undocked from the Poisk module at 6:50 p.m. EST. The trio aboard the Soyuz parachuted to landing in Kazakhstan less than three-and-a-half hours later completing an 11-day station mission.