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SpaceX will launch a private cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station this week and you can watch the action live.
A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch Northrop Grumman’s latest Cygnus robotic freighter on Tuesday (January 30) at 12:07 pm EST (1707 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
You can watch the liftoff live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly through the space agency. Coverage will begin around 11:50 am EST (1650 GMT).
Related: Facts about Cygnus, the Northrop Grumman freighter
Northrop Grumman named this vehicle Cygnus after Patty Hilliard Robertson, a NASA astronaut who died in a private plane crash in 2001. She was selected for the astronaut corps in 1998 and was supposed to fly to the International Space Station ( ISS) in 2002.
The freighter is carrying more than 3,720 kilograms (8,200 pounds) of scientific supplies and hardware. Among the research teams is a cartilage growth experiment that could help address joint damage and disease here on Earth and a European Space Agency project that will test 3D printing metals in microgravity.
You can learn more about this cargo mission, called NG-20 because it is the 20th Northrop Grumman will fly to the ISS for NASA, via NASA Overview.
If all goes as planned, Cygnus will arrive at the orbital laboratory around 4:20 a.m. EST (0920 GMT) on Thursday (February 1). You can watch their rendezvous and docking activities live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA.
The freighter will spend about six months docked at the ISS and then return to wreak fiery destruction on Earth’s atmosphere. An experiment aboard Cygnus, called Kentucky Reentry Probe Experiment 2, will collect data during this fatal dive and take “steps to demonstrate a thermal protection system for spacecraft and their contents during reentry into the atmosphere of the Earth, which can be difficult.” replicate in ground-based simulations,” NASA officials wrote in their overview of the NG-20 mission.
Cygnus is one of three robotic cargo ships currently servicing the ISS, along with SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Russia’s Progress vehicle. Progress, like Cygnus, is an expendable spacecraft, but Dragon is reusable and survives the trip through Earth’s atmosphere and falls gently under parachutes into the ocean.