SpaceX to reuse Dragon spacecraft for ISS cargo mission

Washington Oct 29 (IANS) US space firm SpaceX s next cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) scheduled to launch in December will employ a preflown Dragon capsule the media reported.

The Dragon cargo spacecraft which was flown on SpaceX s sixth commercial resupply mission to station for NASA will launch the CRS-13 resupply mission flight on a Falcon 9 rocket.

The lift-off will also mark the return to service of Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida which has been out of service since September 2016 when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded there during a routine prelaunch test reported space.com.

SpaceX has been making contracted ISS resupply runs for NASA using Dragon and the Falcon 9 for five years.

The upcoming launch will be the 13th such mission for the company.

The CRS-13 mission will carry a number of interesting payloads including a NASA instrument designed to measure how much energy the sun delivers to Earth and a machine that will produce ZBLAN optical fiber on orbit the report said.

The Dragon cargo spacecraft comes back to Earth for soft parachute-aided ocean splashdowns.

--IANS
rt/ksk/mr