SpaceX’s 29th robotic cargo mission to the International Space Station was successfully launched on Thursday, November 9. CRS-29 Dragon launched at 20:28 ET (01:28 GMT, November 10) atop a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

The Falcon’s first stage successfully landed at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) of the Space Force Station at Cape Canaveral. The launch marked the second flight of the stage in which Crew-7 had previously been launched. If all goes as planned, Dragon will arrive at the ISS around 05:20 ET (10:20 GMT) on Saturday, November 11. You can watch the rendezvous and docking here on Space.com.

As the name suggests, CRS-29 is SpaceX’s 29th robotic resupply mission to NASA’s orbiting laboratory. (CRS stands for Commercial Supply Services.) Dragon is carrying more than 6,500 pounds (2,950 kilograms) of supplies and science equipment, including NASA’s AWE and ILLUMA-T experiments, during the event.

AWE (short for Atmospheric Waves Experiment) will study gravitational waves, which are disturbances in the Earth’s atmosphere, similar to the waves created when a pebble falls into a pond. (Gravity waves are very different from gravitational waves, which are ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by the acceleration of massive objects such as black holes and neutron stars.)

ILLUMA-T (“Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal”) will test high-speed communications in collaboration with NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) mission, which launched in December 2021.

Once installed and tested outside the ISS, ILLUMA-T will begin tracking and communicating with the LCRD, a vehicle traveling alongside a U.S. Department of Defense satellite in geosynchronous orbit, more than 22,000 miles (35,400 kilometers) away. ) Above the Earth. The ISS, by contrast, orbits at an average altitude of 250 miles (400 km).

Together, ILLUMA-T and LCRD “will create NASA’s first two-way laser relay system,” agency officials wrote in an overview of CRS-29 science equipment.

“Laser communications could complement the radio frequency systems currently used by most space missions to send data to and from Earth,” they added. “The ILLUMA-T demonstration also paves the way for placing laser communications terminals on spacecraft orbiting the Moon or Mars.”

Dragon also carries a variety of foods, including some seasonal dishes, on CRS-29.

“We have fun holiday treats for the crew like chocolate, pumpkin spice cappuccino, rice cakes, turkey, duck, quail, seafood, cranberry sauce and mochi,” said Dana Weigel, NASA’s Deputy Program Manager for the International Space Station. he said while speaking to the media on Wednesday.