SpaceX successfully launched its resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday.
The Falcon 9, a previously flown cargo vessel loaded with over two and a half tons of equipment and supplies, shot into space for its second two-day flight to the ISS from Cape Canaveral, CBS News reported.
The cargo is being shuttled atop the rocket inside one of SpaceX's Dragon capsules, to the space station where engineers will capture the spacecraft with the Canadarm2 robotic arm, according to a statement by NASA.
There are some interesting trinkets onboard the Dragon, including an instrument developed by the European Space Agency that will be used to study thunderstorm lightning and a phenomena in which hard-to-detect high-energy jets are shot up to the edge of space, CBS News said.
"We'd like to understand what is it," said Torsten Neubert, principal investigator for the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor, according to the network. "They have been observed for a while, from mountaintops, for example, and there have been a few satellites also. So we know a lot about the physics but we don't really know particularly well how, for example, terrestrial gamma ray flashes are generated."
What makes the expedition notable is that it highlights the possibility of reusability in space exploration, according to Jessica Jensen, director of Dragon mission management for SpaceX.
"This is the second resupply mission for NASA where we're not only flying a flight-proven booster but we're also flying a Dragon that has already been to the International Space Station," Jensen said, per CBS News.
"What's really neat about this is this is becoming the norm, and we like that. Reusability is really important for the future of space flight, it's the only way we're going to get thousands of people to space to ... make life multi-planetary. Otherwise, it's just going to be a cost-prohibitive dream."
The Dragon has also been tasked with bringing cargo back to Earth when it leaves the space station in May, The Verge noted.
The capsule will be transporting NASA's old Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot in need of repairs, which the space agency hopes to fix before relaunching back to the station.
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