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
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