SpaceX is moving fast in the field of advancement and with its next mission, it plans to venture into an area it has never entered before. The aerospace company is prepared to send a used Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time and this mission is scheduled for Thursday evening.
SpaceX is going to achieve a rare feat on Thursday as it is doing something that it has not attempted before. According to CNNMoney, the aerospace company of Elon Musk has planned to send a used Dragon spacecraft called CRS-11 to the International Space Station (ISS). CRS-11 will be going on a resupply mission to the ISS and it will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral at 5:55 pm ET.
Notably, CRS-11 has been used before in Sep 2014 and altogether SpaceX has accomplished ten resupply missions from 2012. Also, in all these missions, the Dragon spacecraft was used which is designed to transport cargo to space stations and sits on the top of Falcon 9 rocket. Nevertheless, the same spacecraft has not been used twice in the past, something that SpaceX has been able to do with a first-stage rocket booster.
So, this mission is quite important for Tesla. If it pans out according to the plan, it will see a robotic arm from the ISS taking hold of CRS-11. After that, the ISS crew can unload the supplies from the spacecraft and it is worth noting that the supplies on CRS-11 weigh around 6,000 pounds. The spacecraft will stay at the ISS for one month and then it will be sent back with trash and laboratory results. For landing, the Dragon spacecraft will dive into the sea from where SpaceX will recover it.
It is worth mentioning here that SpaceX receives around $133 million from NASA for each mission. And it is said that Elon Musk's company will be saving big time with this plan of reusing the Dragon spacecraft.
