Everybody loves a rocket launch, or at least everybody here in the office does.

Despite the short lived nature of launches, the awe they inspire is second to none and this coming weekend a rather important launch is taking place.

On Saturday 28th August NASA and SpaceX will launch a commercial resupply service to the International Space Station from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This is the 23rd mission of its kind to the space station.

Several NASA investigations will be aboard the Dragon spacecraft including one that will help to determine whether metabolites from grape skins and seeds using in wine making could help to treat and prevent osteoporosis.

“Another experiment will test an implantable, remote-controlled drug delivery system that will utilize a new research facility aboard the orbiting laboratory. Several Girl Scouts’ experiments also will use this new facility to study plants, ants, and brine shrimp in microgravity,” NASA said.

There is also a new robotic arm aboard that will be demoed in space but could be used on Earth for disaster relief.

As for the launch itself, that is scheduled to take place on Saturday at 3:37AM EDT which is 09:37 here in South Africa.

Shortly after launch Dragon will separate from the Falcon 9 rocket and the spacecraft is expected to reach the International Space Station on Sunday morning where it will spend a month docked to the orbiting laboratory.

“Dragon will dock autonomously to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module, with Expedition 65 flight engineers Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA monitoring operations,” explains NASA.

The launch will be broadcast on NASA’s YouTube channel where tomorrow a space walk will be conducted.

It’s definitely going to be a busy week at NASA.