NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, will launch four life science experiments to the International Space Station aboard NASA's next commercial cargo resupply flight of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

The research missions include a microbiology study of yeast, a fruit fly study designed and built by students, a plant biology investigation and the maiden voyage of NASA's new rodent research system.

The company's fourth commercial resupply mission to the space station is scheduled to lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 11:14 p.m. PDT Friday, Sept. 19. If the launch is postponed, the next launch opportunity is approximately 10:53 p.m. PDT Saturday, Sept. 20.

NASA will host a prelaunch panel discussion at 8 a.m. PDT Sept. 18, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, featuring scientists and researchers who will discuss various science and research studies, including the four Ames-supported payloads to study model organism research using yeast, rodents, fruit flies and plants.

Briefings are subject to a change in time and will be carried live on NASA TV and the agency's website. To schedule an interview at Kennedy with an Ames researcher during prelaunch activities from Sept. 17-19, contact Jessica Culler at [email protected].

From 8 p.m. to midnight PDT, Friday, Sept. 19, Ames will host a live, televised launch screening shown on a 40-foot theater screen.

Five hundred registered guests will hear from a panel of space biosciences researchers as they discuss the four life science research missions Ames is sending to the space station, as well as other NASA missions via exhibits and view the night sky using telescopes. To attend this event, news media must register with James Schwab at [email protected].

This launch will deliver more than 5,000 pounds of supplies and scientific experiments, including:

Ames student Fruit-Fly Experiment (AFEx), for which the payload and hardware was planned, designed, built and tested by a team of master's-level and bachelor's-level students with guidance and mentorship from NASA civil servant scientists and engineers at Ames.

The purpose of AFEx is to gain a better understanding of relationship between oxidative stress - which involves a build-up of harmful molecules inside cells that can cause cell damage, and it is associated with infections and disease - and neurobehavioral adaptation to microgravity in the fruit fly.

AFEx will test whether under conditions of microgravity Indy flies exhibit less change in behavior than wildtype or "normal" control flies. Sharmila Bhattacharya, of the Space Biosciences Division in the Science Mission Directorate at Ames is the principal investigator and mentor.

Seedling Growth-2 will germinate and grow seeds of the Arabidopsis thaliana plant, a member of the mustard family, into tiny seedlings in space. Investigators will study these seedlings to gain a better understanding of the cellular signaling mechanisms involved in plant tropisms-plant movement and growth.

The major goals of this project are to determine the combined influences of light and gravity on plant development through the identification of changes in the mechanisms and regulation of essential cellular functions.

The Seedling Growth-2 mission is a collaborative NASA / European Space Agency (ESA) plant biology experiment with a NASA-selected principal investigator and an ESA principal investigator. John Z. Kiss of the University of Mississippi is the NASA-selected principal investigator. F. Javier Medina of the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid, is the ESA-selected principal investigator.

Rodent Research-1 is the maiden voyage of the new Rodent Research hardware system that provides the capability to conduct repeated long-duration biological research studies onboard the space station.

NASA Space Life and Physical Sciences and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) developed the Rodent Research-1 spaceflight experiments. The goal of this first mission is to validate system and hardware performance and for the station crew to demonstrate critical research operations. Ames manages the RR-1 experiment and will conduct rodent research operations from the ISS Operations Center at Ames.

Micro-8 will examine how spaceflight affects potentially infectious organisms. Specifically, Micro-8 will assess gene expression, morphology and virulence responses of a yeast strain, Candida albicans (C. albicans), following exposure to spaceflight.

NASA's Space Biology Project at Ames manages Micro-8, which was designed by principal investigator Sheila Nielsen-Preiss of Montana State University, Bozeman. The Micro-8 payload developer is BioServe Space Technologies, University of Colorado in Boulder.

A post-launch briefing will be held approximately 90 minutes after launch. If launch occurs Sept. 19 (PDT), NASA TV will provide live coverage Monday, Sept. 22, of the arrival of the Dragon cargo ship to the International Space Station. Grapple and berthing coverage will begin at 2:30 a.m. with grapple at approximately 4:30 a.m. Berthing coverage begins at 6:30 a.m.

The Dragon will remain attached to the space station's Harmony module for more than four weeks and then detach and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California with almost two tons of experiment samples and equipment returning from the station.