US cargo ship departure from International Space Station

After delivering almost 5,000 pounds of supplies, experiments and equipment - including a docking adapter for future American commercial crew spacecraft - a SpaceX Dragon cargo craft is set to leave the International Space Station Friday.

SpaceX's Commercial Resupply Service-9 mission arrived on station July 20. The Dragon spacecraft will be detached from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module using the station's Canadarm 2 robotic arm. Robotics controllers will send commands to maneuver the spacecraft into place before it's released by Expedition 48 Flight Engineers Kate Rubins of NASA and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency at 6:10 a.m. EDT.

The spacecraft will move to a safe distance from the station and fire its engines at 10:56 a.m. EDT to drop out of orbit and descend back to Earth. A parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific is expected at 11:47 a.m. EDT about 326 miles west of Baja California.

A recovery team will retrieve the capsule and about 3,000 pounds of cargo and experiments for researchers and investigators.

In the event of adverse weather conditions in the Pacific, the backup departure and splashdown date is Sunday.

Video: New experiment sent to space station will research Alzheimer

During a panel discussions from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, scientists and researchers discussed the onboard science and research studies being carried to space aboard the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft which include the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System and supplies for research on the risks of in-flight infections in astronauts, as well as research on degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's.

The fifth SpaceX cargo mission to the International Space Station will carry more than 3,700 pounds of scientific experiments, technology demonstrations and supplies, including critical materials to support 256 science and research investigations that will take place on the space station.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will carry the Dragon cargo ship into orbit on Friday with liftoff planned at 5:09 a.m. EST.

Video: Over 5,000 pounds of cargo launched to space station

A new NASA mission that will boost global monitoring of ocean winds for improved weather forecasting and climate studies is among about 5,000 pounds (2,270 kilograms) of cargo now on its way to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. The cargo ship was launched on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 1:52 a.m. EDT Sunday.

This is the fourth cargo delivery flight for SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) to the space station through a $1.6 billion NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract.

One device aboard Dragon, the International Space Station-Rapid Scatterometer, or ISS-RapidScat, will monitor ocean winds from the vantage point of the space station. This space-based scatterometer, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., is a remote sensing instrument that uses radar pulses reflected from the ocean's surface from different angles to calculate surface wind speed and direction. This information will be useful for weather and marine forecasting and hurricane monitoring.

ISS-RapidScat will be in an orbit that is unique from any other wind measuring instrument currently in space. This vantage point will give scientists the first near-global direct observations of how ocean winds vary over the course of the day due to solar heating. The new mission will also provide cross-calibration of the international constellation of ocean wind satellites, extending the continuity and usefulness of the scatterometer data record.

Approximately nine days after berthing with the station, the RapidScat instrument and its nadir adapter, which orients the instrument to point down at Earth, will be robotically installed on the External Payload Facility SDX site of the Columbus module over a three-day period by the station's robotic arm, which is controlled by ground controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center. ISS-RapidScat is an autonomous payload, requiring no interaction from astronauts aboard the station.

Using a mechanical hand, the station's robotic arm will first extract RapidScat's nadir adapter from the trunk of the Dragon and install it on an external site on the Columbus module. The arm will then pluck the RapidScat instrument assembly from the Dragon's trunk and attach it to the nadir adapter, completing the installation. Each of the two operations will take about six hours.

Once installed, RapidScat will be activated over a period of three days. Checkout of RapidScat will be completed approximately two weeks after installation. About two weeks of preliminary calibration and validation will then follow. RapidScat will then be ready to begin its two-year science mission.

ISS-RapidScat is a partnership between JPL and the International Space Station Program Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, with support from the Earth Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The device is the third of five NASA Earth science missions scheduled to launch into space within 12 months.

3-D printing and rodents

Dragon also will deliver the first-ever 3-D printer in space. The technology enables parts to be manufactured quickly and cheaply in space, instead of waiting for the next cargo resupply vehicle delivery. The research team also will gain valuable insight into improving 3-D printing technology on Earth by demonstrating it in microgravity.

New biomedical hardware launched aboard the spacecraft will help facilitate prolonged biological studies in microgravity. The Rodent Research Hardware and Operations Validation (Rodent Research-1) investigation provides a platform for long-duration rodent experiments in space. These investigations examine how microgravity affects animals, providing information relevant to human spaceflight, discoveries in basic biology and knowledge that may have direct impact toward human health on Earth.

Biological research

The Dragon spacecraft will also transport other biological research, including a new plant study. The Biological Research in Canisters (BRIC) hardware has supported a variety of plant growth experiments aboard the space station. The BRIC-19 investigation will focus on the growth and development in microgravity of Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings, a small flowering plant related to cabbage. Because plant development on Earth is impacted by mechanical forces such as wind or a plant's own weight, researchers hope to improve understanding of how the growth responses of plants are altered by the absence of these forces when grown in microgravity.

Dragon is scheduled to be grappled at 7:04 a.m. EDT on Tuesday by Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, using the space station's robotic arm to take hold of the spacecraft. NASA's Reid Wiseman will support Gerst in a backup position. Dragon is scheduled to depart the space station in mid-October for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, west of Baja California, bringing from the space station almost 3,200 pounds (1,450 kilograms) of science, hardware and crew supplies.

NASA recently awarded contracts to SpaceX and The Boeing Company to transport U.S. crews to and from the space station with the goal of certifying those transportation systems in 2017. Currently, NASA relies on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to launch astronauts to and from the space station.