SpaceX to resume flight to ISS with inflatable space habitat

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is seen as it launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base Space Launch Complex 4 East with the Jason-3 spacecraft onboard, on January 17, 2016, in this NASA handout photo. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON -- US space firm SpaceX is expected to resume its resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, carrying aboard an experimental inflatable space habitat that might be crucial for future deep space explorations.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is targeting liftoff on the company's Falcon 9 rocket at 4:43 p.m. local time(2043 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

This is the California-based company's eighth cargo mission to the ISS. It also marked the first flight of Dragon to the ISS since June, when the Falcon 9 rocket exploded about two minutes after liftoff.

As usual, Spacex will attempt to land the Falcon 9's first stage on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast.

The company achieved one successful soft landing on a land-based pad at Cape Canaveral in December last year, but its four previous droneship landing attempts all failed.

"I certainly hope we're going to nail the landing this time," said Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president for flight reliability, during a pre-launch press conference.

Among the almost 7,000 pounds (3,200 kilograms) of items inside the Dragon spacecraft is the 3,100-pound (1,400-kilogram) Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), a 17.8-million-US-dollar project that will be attached to the ISS to test the use of an inflatable space habitat in microgravity.

"It is the future," said Kirk Shireman, manager of NASA's ISS program. "Humans will be using these kinds of modules as we move further and further off the planet, and actually as we inhabit low Earth orbit."

According to NASA, inflatable habitats greatly decrease the amount of transport volume at launch for future space missions, and take up less room on a rocket, but once set up, provide additional volume for living and working.

Shireman said the company that developed BEAM, Bigelow Aerospace, launched two inflatable modules about 10 years ago using Russian rockets but this will be the first time humans will interact with such a module.