Level 1 — Absolute Beginner

On Tuesday, a SpaceX rocket will go to space. It will take supplies to astronauts on the space station.

The rocket is called Falcon 9. It will lift off from Florida. The cargo will fly inside a ship called Dragon.

One special thing inside is a small piece of bone. It is made from wood. Scientists want to learn about weak bones.

The Dragon ship will reach the space station on Thursday. The astronauts will use the supplies and the science tools.

rocket

A flying machine that goes very fast and can leave Earth.

space

The empty area above the air around Earth.

astronaut

A person who travels to space.

space station

A large laboratory in space where astronauts live and work.

cargo

Things that are carried by a ship, truck, plane or rocket.

wood

The hard material that comes from the trunk of a tree.

bone

A hard part inside the body of people and animals.

Florida

A state in the southeast of the United States, where many rockets launch.

Level 2 — Elementary

On Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at 7:16 p.m. eastern time, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. On top of the rocket sits a Dragon capsule carrying about 6,500 pounds of cargo for the International Space Station.

This mission is the 34th time SpaceX has flown a Dragon cargo flight under its contract with NASA. The capsule will dock automatically with the station's Harmony module at about 9:50 a.m. on Thursday, May 14, while the orbiting laboratory passes high above Earth.

Among the science experiments on board is a small bone scaffold made of wood. Doctors hope it can teach them how to treat osteoporosis, a disease that makes human bones weak and easy to break. Microgravity makes astronauts lose bone faster than people on Earth, which makes the space station a useful place to test new bone materials.

Other experiments include a new instrument to study charged particles around Earth that can damage power grids and satellites, equipment to study how red blood cells and the spleen change in space, and a project to compare ground-based microgravity simulators with the real thing. After about a month, Dragon will return to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.

capsule

A small spacecraft that carries cargo or astronauts and can land back on Earth.

dock

When a spacecraft connects to another spacecraft or a space station.

microgravity

A condition where gravity feels very weak, as inside a spacecraft in orbit.

osteoporosis

A disease that makes bones thinner and easier to break.

scaffold

A structure that supports something else; in biology, a frame that helps cells grow.

charged particle

A tiny piece of matter, like an electron or ion, that carries an electric charge.

satellite

An object placed in orbit around the Earth or another body, often built to do a job.

splash down

To land in the ocean, as some spacecraft do when they return from space.

Level 3 — Intermediate

NASA and SpaceX are targeting a 7:16 p.m. EDT lift-off on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for the 34th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station. A flight-proven Falcon 9 will boost a refurbished Dragon cargo capsule carrying roughly 6,500 pounds of crew supplies, equipment and a notably science-heavy experiment manifest. A pre-launch teleconference featuring NASA and SpaceX officials opened the mission's public profile on Monday, May 11.

Among the headline payloads is a wooden-derived bone-scaffold experiment, an iteration of the European Space Agency's longer-running b.Bone programme that takes advantage of the human cellular reaction to microgravity. Inside the experiment, decellularised plant-based scaffolds are seeded with human osteoblast and osteoclast lineages and exposed to long-duration microgravity, where bone remodelling proceeds at an accelerated pace that mimics — in a controlled, observable way — the pathology of osteoporosis on the ground. Researchers hope the results will guide the design of biodegradable, plant-based implants that can be tuned to favour bone regeneration over resorption.

Dragon will also deliver a charged-particle instrument that will sit on the station's exterior and measure the magnetospheric environment with the goal of improving forecasts of geomagnetic storms that can disrupt power grids and damage satellites; a microgravity-simulator validation study to determine how faithfully Earth-based clinostat and random-positioning systems reproduce the cellular biology of true free-fall; an investigation of red-blood-cell turnover and splenic adaptation in flight crew, of obvious importance for the multi-year missions that NASA is planning to cislunar space and Mars; and a precision radiometer designed to take highly accurate measurements of solar light reflected by Earth and the Moon, a key data input for climate models.

Dragon is scheduled for autonomous docking at the forward port of the Harmony module at approximately 9:50 a.m. EDT on Thursday, May 14. The vehicle will remain at the station for about a month, after which it will undock and splash down off the coast of California, returning time-sensitive samples and hardware. NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract continues to underpin the station's day-to-day science programme through the end of the decade.

manifest

A detailed list of cargo or passengers on a ship, plane or spacecraft.

osteoblast

A cell that builds new bone tissue.

osteoclast

A cell that breaks down bone tissue.

decellularised scaffold

A natural framework, such as a plant or animal tissue, from which all cells have been removed, leaving the structure for new cells to grow in.

magnetosphere

The region of space around Earth dominated by the planet's magnetic field.

Level 4 — Advanced

On Tuesday, May 12, 2026 at 7:16 p.m. EDT, a flight-proven SpaceX Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station carrying a refurbished Cargo Dragon spacecraft on the 34th Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station. The payload manifest, totalling approximately 6,500 pounds of pressurised and unpressurised cargo, is dominated this flight not by consumables but by an unusually dense roster of biomedical and space-environment investigations, including the first ascent of a plant-derived decellularised bone scaffold designed explicitly to interrogate the cellular basis of osteoporosis under sustained microgravity.

The bone-scaffold experiment, a derivative of the European Space Agency's b.Bone heritage, exploits the well-characterised acceleration of bone resorption in spaceflight to compress decades of terrestrial pathology into a measurable arc of weeks. Lignocellulosic scaffolds — chemically and enzymatically depleted of cellular content to leave only their three-dimensional architectural template — are seeded ground-side with co-cultures of human osteoblast and osteoclast lineages derived from age-matched donors, then ferried aloft for in-orbit incubation. Investigators will read out the remodelling balance through histomorphometry and cytokine panels on return, allowing direct mechanistic comparison with parallel terrestrial controls and informing the design of next-generation biodegradable implants whose porosity and mineral binding profile can be tuned to either resist resorption or, in the orthotopic graft context, deliberately invite it.

Sharing the manifest is a space-weather payload installed externally on the station's truss that will perform high-cadence, simultaneous electron and proton flux measurements in the inner magnetosphere — data directly relevant to refining the empirical kernels used in geomagnetically-induced-current forecasts that protect continental power grids and to improving anomaly-prediction models for low-Earth-orbit satellites. A second biomedical investigation will quantify the kinetics of erythrocyte turnover, splenic sequestration and reticulocyte release in flight crew across a longer-than-usual observation window, addressing a knowledge gap directly germane to NASA's plans for crewed cis-lunar and ultimately Mars expeditions, where unanticipated haemolytic decompensation has been flagged as a tail risk in agency mission-risk integrated models.

The Dragon vehicle is targeted for autonomous rendezvous and docking at the forward port of the Harmony module at approximately 9:50 a.m. EDT on Thursday, May 14, where it will remain on-orbit for roughly thirty days before undocking and executing a propulsive deorbit burn for splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, returning time-sensitive scientific samples to investigators within a daylight recovery window. The CRS-34 launch follows CRS-33's December 2025 mission and continues the Phase 2 contract that underpins the station's day-to-day research throughput as NASA simultaneously refines its commercial low-Earth-orbit transition strategy ahead of the station's currently scheduled controlled deorbit at the end of the decade.