SpaceX Marks Its 27th Commercial Resupply Mission

American spacecraft manufacturer, SpaceX successfully launched its 27th commercial resupply mission to the international space station on Tuesday. The Kennedy space center marked the completion of this mission.

According to reports the Falcon 9 rocket was lifted off at around 8.30 p.m. from Launch Complex 39A on Florida’s space coast.

Till now SpaceX CRS-27 is known to carry more than 15 ISS National Lab-sponsored payloads, namely tissue chip research, advanced materials projects, technology demonstrations, and physical sciences studies, according to the ISS National Laboratory.

It added one of the uncrewed Dragon spacecraft’s experiments is likely to examine heart changes in space, a part of the collaboration between the National Center for Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health and the International Space Station National Laboratory’s Tissue Chips in space initiative.

The collaboration further includes sending up two final studies both being second flights of heart-related investigations that use tissue chips and small devices mimicking the functions of human organs.

According to an official statement, the team will test the engineered heart muscle tissue grown in microgravity and its future usage as a model for heart failure to screen potential new drugs.

Commenting on the matter Liz Warren, associate program scientist at the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) said, “spaceflight is responsible for many significant changes in the human body and a tissue chip in space is expected to behave much like an astronaut’s body, experiencing the rapid change”.

Reports also claim the team of researchers from Stanford University under the mentorship of Joseph Wu will pretreat the engineered heart tissues with FDA-approved drugs sending them to the ISS to determine whether the therapeutics help in reducing the negative effects of microgravity on the tissues.

NASA officials further notified that 6,300 pounds of supplies would be onboard, including NASA’s HUNCH Ball Clamp Monopod, a student-manufactured project in filming space easier and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Tanpopo-5 investigation, studying the origin of transportation and life survival in space and on extra-terrestrial planets.

Astronauts on the space station have also requested fresh fruit alongside a variety of cheeses, all of which will be included in the payload, NASA said.

NASA added that there was a 10 per cent chance of weather violation at the launching period from its original 50 per cent chance.