SpaceX It launched the 30th cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA on the afternoon of March 21, delivering 3 tons of supplies and scientific equipment to the orbiting laboratory. The Falcon 9 rocket carrying a crewless Cargo Dragon spacecraft lifted off at 4:55 PM ET (20:55 GMT) from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The mission, known as CRS-30, was the first cargo launch from SLC-40 since March 2020. The facility has since been equipped with a new launch tower, allowing for more efficient cargo loading and modernizing crew support equipment. is also running.

Prior to the SLC-40 upgrade, “we loaded cargo while the vehicle was horizontal using a mobile cleanroom before lifting the vehicle vertically for lunch, but with this new state-of-the-art crew turret essential for our human spaceflight missions,” said Sarah Walker, director of mission management for SpaceX Dragon. “This operation carrying late loads has also received a major upgrade,” he said at the pre-launch press conference on Tuesday (March 19).

“It is much easier to load NASA’s wide range of time-critical science onto our Dragon spacecraft in flight orientation,” he added.

The first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket returned to Earth as planned today and made a vertical landing at Landing Zone-1 at SpaceX’s Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, approximately eight minutes after launch. This was the sixth launch and landing of a launch vehicle, according to SpaceX’s mission statement.