SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is set to deliver new ocean monitoring technology, a 3D printer as well as rodent and plant research materials to astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS).
It will carry the Earth-observing climate instrument -- ISS-Rapid Scatterometer (ISS-RapidScat) -- to the ISS.
ISS-RapidScat monitors ocean winds from the vantage point of the space station.
This space-based scatterometer is a remote sensing instrument that uses radar pulses reflected from the ocean's surface at different angles to calculate surface wind speed and direction. This information will be useful for weather forecasting and hurricane monitoring.
"We will be able to see how wind speed changes with the time of day," said Ernesto Rodriguez, principal investigator for ISS-RapidScat at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"ISS-RapidScat will link together all previous and current scatterometer missions, providing us with a more complete picture of how ocean winds change," Rodriguez added.
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The Rodent Research Hardware and Operations Validation (Rodent Research-1) investigation will provide a platform for long duration rodent experiments in space.
"In the coming years, rodent studies conducted aboard the space station will gather foundational data that will help advance human space exploration and provide new opportunities to improve quality of life on Earth," noted Ruth Globus, a rodent research project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Centre in Moffett Field, California.
Another biological research investigation aboard Dragon includes a new plant study.
The Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC) hardware has supported a variety of plant growth experiments aboard the space station. It will focus on the growth and development of Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings in microgravity.
"A. thaliana is a small flowering plant related to cabbage, and its genetic makeup is simple and well-understood by the plant biology community. This knowledge offers easy recognition of any changes that occur as a result of microgravity adaptation," NASA added.
Another new technology to be delivered is the first 3-D printer to operate in zero gravity.
"This delivery is helping the space station make discoveries off Earth, for Earth," the NASA statement concluded.