NASA's CRS-23 Mission 40% GO for early Saturday Launch

Dragon CRS-2 SpX-23 is a Commercial Resupply Service mission that will be heading to the International Space Station. SpaceX was awarded this mission by NASA in 2016 and will launch it on its Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket using a Cargo Dragon 2, C208-2. The rocket will lift off from Launch Complex 39A, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This mission will mark the third flight for SpaceX under NASA’s CRS Phase 2 contract.

If weather does cause a scrub for Saturday's launch at 3:37am EDT, the back-up launch day will be on Sunday at 3:14am, which weather forecasts is currently 60% GO for launch

Research Payloads

READI FP

REducing Arthritis Dependent Inflammation First Phase (READI FP) is a project that will study how microgravity and space radiation affect normal metabolism of the bone tissue. It is known that astronauts at the ISS show a loss of bone mineral density, which is caused by the process called resorption. This phenomenon is led by the activation of osteoclast cells. This disease can be a serious issue for future long-duration space missions, thus, effective countermeasures need to be found.

The READI FP project will evaluate a protective effect of bio-collagen with a mixture of natural bioactive metabolites (extracted from wine-making wastes) on bone tissue. The results of this study can be crucial not only for astronauts, but also for everyday people here on Earth. For instance, they could contribute to prevention and control of bone loss due to disability, and to osteoporosis in post-menopausal women.

Making Space for Girls Challenge

The 2020 Making Space for Girls challenge was a competition open to young female researches in the United States. Three of the proposed projects won and will fly to the ISS on the CRS-23 mission. All of them will study living organisms in a microgravity. The first one will examine microgravity’s effects on ant behavior, the second one will look at plant growth in space, and the last one will observe brine shrimps (sea monkeys) at the space laboratory.

Student Spaceflights Experiments Program – Mission 15

The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP) will launch its 15th mission. Like the previous missions, this one will bring several student experiments to the ISS. Four of them will study germination techniques as potential food production options for astronauts on deep space missions. Another will evaluate how tardigrades (water bears) adapt to space. Finally, the sixth experiment will assess aluminum corrosion.

Faraday-NICE

Nanofluidic Implant Communication Experiment (NICE) aims to develop a drug delivery system that can be used on the ISS and operated remotely from Earth. This system is intended to be implanted and release precise doses of a drug on demand over an extended period of time. The device does not use any catheters or moving mechanical components (like an infusion pump), which makes this approach minimally invasive.

The CRS-2 SpX-23 mission will deliver these implants immersed in saline so the crew can test remote control between Earth and the ISS. This study will be performed at the station’s Faraday Research Facility using the EXPRESS racks.

ELaNa 37 CubeSats

Among the payload in the Dragon spacecraft will be three CubeSats that were designed by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Inter-American University of Puerto Rico.

ELaNa is an initiative that was proposed by NASA and is managed by the Launch Services Program (LSP) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The main aim of this program is to collaborate with universities all across the US to design, manufacture, and launch research satellites into space. ELaNa brings university students closer to real space missions, giving them opportunities to dive in and to get involved in the process from A to Z, from designing and assembling CubeSats, to launching and operating them.

DLR-EAC Retinal Diagnostics Study

The DLR-EAC study aims at implementing small, non-invasive, non-contact retinal imaging devices into daily practice for astronauts. This project will be documenting progression of vision problems that are common among the crew at the ISS (called Space-Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome). The tool will use commercially available ophthalmology lens attached to a mobile gadget. Compared to some older eye diagnostics devices, the new ones offer several advantages in size, weight, and diagnostic capability. The team at the ISS will simply clip the hardware to their onboard iPad Pro. At several time points, crew members will take video images of each other’s retinas, after which the data will be downlinked via the application. Then, a machine learning model will be used to detect retinal abnormalities.

Project Maleth

Maleth is the first ever Maltese mission that is going to space! This project was created by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of Malta and Space Applications Services NV/SA (Belgium). It is led by Prof. Joseph Borg, current President of the Malta Association of Biomedical Scientists, whose research interests are experimental haematology and molecular genetics.

A Bio-cube that will be sent to the ISS contains human skin microbiome samples from Type 2 Diabetic patients with diabetic foot ulcers that are resistant to treatment. Diabetes is a huge issue not only in Malta (12.2% of the population suffer from this disease) but also worldwide. The study aims at finding a number of biomarkers of this disease, which could give rise to molecular therapy and precision-based medicine. The samples will be analyzed in a multi-omic manner before the launch and at the ISS. This way scientists will be able to determine their adaptation and changes to the space environment.

OSCAR-QUBE

Optical Sensors based on CARbon materials: QUantum BElgium (OSCAR-QUBE) is a team of 15 students from Hasselt University (Belgium) who won the second edition of Orbit Your Thesis! This program is conducted by ESA Academy. As its name suggests, it selects outstanding students’ projects to be launched to the ISS. The first edition started in 2018 with the AIM “Artery In Microgravity” team.

OSCAR-QUBE is developing a new generation of magnetic field sensors. The core of sensors consists of a single crystal diamond that contains a defect in the crystalline lattice called Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers. This defect can be used as a magnetic field probe and has several unique characteristics such as sub-picotesla sensitivity, fast response (<200 ns) to the changes in the magnetic field, and wide dynamic range (fT – mT). With this approach, the students want to measure the magnetic field in LEO and create a high-resolution map around the Earth.

MISSE-15-NASA

Materials International Space Station Experiment-15-NASA (MISSE-15-NASA) will arrive to the ISS to evaluate the effect of the low-Earth orbit environment on the characteristics of various materials and components. MISSE-15-NASA will include tests of concrete, protective fiberglass composites, polymer materials, thin-film solar cells, radiation protection materials, and the Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS). Moreover, thermal protection coatings that can be used for future spacecraft and reentry heat shields will be among the samples.

GITAI Robotic Arm

Nanoracks-GITAI Robotic Arm is the second robot that will be delivered to the ISS this year. The first one was the new European robotic arm (ERA) that was launched together with the Russian science module “Nauka” in July.

Designed by GITAI Japan Inc., the robot will work as a general-purpose helper under the pressurized environment inside the Bishop Airlock. It will operate tools and switches and run scientific experiments. The next step will be to test it outside the ISS in the harsh space environment. The robot will be able to perform tasks both autonomously and via teleoperations. Its arm has eight degrees of freedom and a 1-meter reach.