Dragon Makes a Splash

The SpaceX Dragon capsule arrived back to Earth on Saturday, concluding the company’s 14th International Space Station resupply mission. SpaceX CRS-14 launched to the space station on April 4, delivering more than 5,800 pounds of science investigations and crew supplies. Dragon returned with more than 4,000 pounds of cargo, including samples and data from several ISSInternational Space Station National Lab projects, including:

• Two student-designed DNA experiments from the Genes in Space-5 payload.
• A Made in Space investigation focused on producing ZBLAN optical fibers in microgravityThe condition of perceived weightlessness created when an object is in free fall, for example when an object is in orbital motion. Microgravity alters many observable phenomena within the physical and life sciences, allowing scientists to study things in ways not possible on Earth. The International Space Station provides access to a persistent microgravity environment..
• The Rodent Research-6 investigation (a collaboration between the Houston Methodist Research Institute, Novartis, and NanoMedical Systems) testing an implantable drug delivery system for a drug to treat muscle wasting.
• An experiment from 490 BioTech, Inc. evaluating the effectiveness of a tool kit designed to test the safety and effectiveness of anti-cancer drugs.
• Hard drives containing data for Project Meteor, aimed at examining meteors as they burn through Earth’s atmosphere in order to learn more about asteroids and comets.
• Student experiments from the 2017 Wisconsin Crystal Growing Competition testing students’ optimized conditions for Earth-based crystallization against microgravity-based crystallization.