SpaceX spacecraft completes ISS resupply mission

On March 26, the unmanned SpaceX Dragon cargo ship of SpaceX Space Exploration Corporation returned safely to Earth after completing its mission on the International Space Station (ISS).

In a statement on Twitter, SpaceX, a company based in California, USA, said that with the support of three large parachutes, the Dragon spacecraft landed on the surface of the Pacific Ocean, about 320km off the coast of Mexico.

SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. (Source: NASA)

During its second mission to the ISS, the Dragon spacecraft completed its mission in just over three weeks, delivering more than 540kg of food, scientific equipment and other supplies to the ISS crew of two American scientists, three Russians and one Canadian.

The Dragon spacecraft brought back to Earth more than a ton of equipment and supplies from scientific experiments conducted on the ISS, far more than the cargo the spacecraft delivered to the ISS during its last mission. One of the instruments was designed to study molecular changes in a small flower in microgravity, while another was designed to examine how plant roots grow in low-oxygen environments.

Owned by billionaire PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, SpaceX is one of several private companies working with NASA to fly round-trip flights between Earth and the ISS. NASA has signed a $1.6 billion contract with SpaceX to fly at least 12 resupply flights to the ISS in the coming years. SpaceX is the first company to fly such a commercial flight.

So far, SpaceX has only flown unmanned flights into orbit, but the company plans to partner with NASA to conduct manned flights into space within the next four years.

Since the end of NASA's space shuttle program in 2011, NASA has leased Russian Soyuz spacecraft to carry crews to the ISS, but the Soyuz does not have a cargo compartment to bring back goods./.

According to (TTXVN) - VT