SpaceX successfully launched its workhorse Dragon spacecraft on a milestone resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, August 24, 2025.
This marks the 50th journey of a Dragon to the orbiting laboratory since its first demonstration mission in May, 2012.
SpaceX executed its commercial resupply services (CRS-33) mission that lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket. This was the seventh time a first-stage booster landed on the “A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG).”
ASOG is specifically designed by SpaceX’s autonomous drone ship that is designed to catch and secure Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket boosters after their return from space.
The Cargo Dragon is on its third flight that now completes a 28-hour journey to an autonomous dock with the ISS, delivering over 5,000 pounds of crucial cargo.
With this mission, the significance of SpaceX extends far beyond a key logistic provider as the spacecraft is carrying hardware for more than 50 science experiments.
The launch also celebrates 25 years of continuous human presence on the ISS which hosted over 280 residents and conducted thousands of experiments.
“Over that 25 years, we’ve hosted more than 280 residents. We’ve enabled more than 4,000 different scientific experiments and technology demonstrations and that represents the work of over 5,000 researchers from over 110 countries around the world,” said Heidi Parris, associate program scientist for NASA’s ISS Program Research Office.
Among these, one research aims to fight against a major health issue for astronauts. Parris stated: “This research team is testing out the hypothesis that blocking a certain protein in the body that is known to promote bone loss or bone health changes may actually help reduce the overall bone loss that astronauts experience in space.”