SpaceX launches AI-enabled robot companion, vegetation monitor to space station

A commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule packed with a robot assistant for the International Space Station’s crew, pouches of extra strong coffee, and a NASA science instrument designed to track the health of plants on Earth left Cape Canaveral aboard a Falcon 9 rocket Friday on a three-day pursuit of the orbiting research lab. Riding a plume of orange rocket exhaust, the Falcon 9 launcher climbed into a clear pre-sunrise sky after liftoff from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad at 5:42:42 a.m. EDT (0942:42 GMT), roughly the moment Earth’s rotation carried the spaceport under the International Space Station’s orbital track. More

(Source: SpaceFlight Noow - Jun 30)