A little while ago Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft blasted off atop an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), part of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on Wallops Island. After about nine minutes it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage went en route to its destination. This is its 13th official mission, called NG-13 or CRS NG-13, to transport supplies to the International Space Station for NASA.

This Cygnus spacecraft was named “Robert Lawrence” after the first African-American selected as astronaut in the Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL) program. This Cygnus cargo spacecraft carries a total of 3,633 kg (8,009 lbs.) of cargo, including 757 kg (2,174 lbs.) of various types of supplies for the crew, 1,603 kg (3,534 lbs.) of hardware and the rest in equipment and various components. The cargo includes various CubeSat-class nanosatellites and experiments needed for some of the scientific research carried out on the International Space Station.

Among the experiments on board the Cygnus space cargo ship there’s the Mobile Space Lab facility, capable of carrying out programmed experiments connected to the growth of tissues for a few weeks without human supervision. Other biological and medical experiments are for example OsteoOmics, among the ones that aim to understand the mechanisms of bone loss in microgravity, and Phage Evolution, which examines the effects of microgravity and radiation exposure on bacteriophage viruses that can help health of humans killing potentially harmful bacteria.

The Mochii investigation provides an initial demonstration of a new miniature scanning electron microscope (SEM). It will be useful, among other things, to check the presence of microscopic particles on the International Space Station to assess if they can be harmful to the equipment and especially to the health of the crew.

The Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to reach the International Space Station on Tuesday to be captured by the Canadarm2 robotic arm around 9.05 AM UTC. If there are no problems, the day after the arrival of the Cygnus the crew will open the hatch and start unloading its cargo.