Double Dragon 🐉 🚀 🐉

Two SpaceX Dragon capsules are now in space for the first time.

The NASA CRS-21 mission took flight this morning, the first flight of the Cargo 2 design, carrying 1.5x as much science payload as the earlier cargo Dragon (6,400 pounds on this flight).

Half of the payload weight is the bulbous Bishop module you can see here in the bottom of Dragon’s trunk at the moment separation from the Falcon 9 upper stage. Bishop is the first commercially-funded airlock module for the ISS; it will be attached to the Tranquility module of the ISS, allowing for the Canadarm 2 to attach it to one of the stations berthing ports where it will be used for deploying small satellites brought up to station on future missions.

This morning’s flight is the 100th successful flight of the Falcon 9 rocket, and 47th re-flight of a “flight proven” booster (my marketing moniker, clearly better than an unproven flight). SpaceX is building a fleet of eight Dragons. Short deployment video from this morning.

Science payloads include:

• THE BRAIN ORGANOID EXPERIMENT to study how masses of cells organize and grow into the start of a functional brain (cell migration, interaction, division, and death in 0g).

• BIOASTEROID to study how gravity affects the interaction between microbial biofilm formation and rock in reduced gravity. Two bio-mining reactors will be used to develop techniques to mine on other celestial bodies.

• CARDINAL HEART to study how changes in cardiovascular cells and tissues are different in 0g. Cardinal Heart uses a 3D chip of engineered heart tissue.

• SUBSA-BRAINS to study better methods to braze two alloys to each other in 0g. These methods will be used for repairing the ISS and building human habitats in space.

• HEMOCUE to test white blood cell counting systems, which have been used and validated in 1g, but not 0g.