MOSCOW. March 1 (Interfax-AVN) - The U.S. private company SpaceX is to launch a Falcon 9 carrier rocket with the reusable spacecraft Dragon on Friday, the company said on its website.
The launch has been set for 10:10 a.m. local time (7:10 p.m. Moscow time), SpaceX said in a press release.
The Dragon cargo capsule will dock with the International Space Station on Saturday, delivering 544 kilograms of cargo to the crew, including equipment for 160 scientific experiments, the company said in a press release.
The upcoming flight will be the Dragon's third in succession and second under commercial arrangements with NASA. The first demonstration flight was performed in May 2012, and the second in succession and first commercial in October 2012.
The Dragon will approach the station as it did before and then two astronauts will dock it to the station using a manipulator.
The capsule is to return to earth on March 25. As common in the U.S., it will go down to the Pacific Ocean off California, bringing more than 1 tonne of cargo, including data on medical research and used equipment.
Under a contract with NASA worth $1.6 billion, SpaceX is to accomplish 12 Dragon flights to the ISS.
The ISS is currently home to a six-member crew: Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky, Roman Romanenko and Yevgeny Tarelkin, American astronauts Kevin Ford (ISS commander) and Thomas Mashburn, and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield.