SpaceX's upcoming Falcon 9 rocket launch from Kennedy Space Center will carry a host of science experiments to the International Space Station, aside from the SAGE III instrument to study Earth's atmosphere.

They include:

The Lightning Imagining Sensor, or LIS, will sample lightning over a wider geographic area than any previous instrument. Lightning strikes occur around the globe at a rate of 45 per second, said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth Science Division in a media call Wednesday afternoon. LIS will help measure the amount, rate and energy of those strikes, improve our understanding of their weather effects and offer insight into weather forecasting, climate change, atmospheric chemistry and physics and aircraft and spacecraft safety. LIS was developed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and the University of Alabama.

The "Nanobiosym" experiment will try to learn how microgravity affects the growth and mutation of a superbug. Superbugs are germs or bacteria that can rapidly mutate and become resistant to antibiotics, said Anita Goel, scientific director of the project. "By using microgravity in space as an incubator," she said, "we can better predict what these mutations might look like. ... Do these bacteria grow faster and mutate faster in a microgravity environment? And, if so, why?" What they learn could help to develop better drug treatment. Space station crew isn't at risk of exposure, she said, because the entire system will be contained.

"Raven" is a step toward robotic missions far from Earth developing a navigation and rendezvous technology to get humans out of the loop, said Ben Reed, a deputy division director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Once installed on the ISS, the Raven module will observe the range, bearing and pose of every visiting vehicle as it approaches, then gimbal or pivot autonomously for rendezvous.

"The next era that we are bridging toward now," Reed said, "is going to be, in our view, dominated by missions where you have satellites being upgraded, being serviced, being refueled, being relocated, being assembled in orbit." Autonomous systems will benefit not only NASA's ambitions for deep-space missions to Mars or an asteroid, he said, but commercial missions, too.

Growing better crystals in space could help develop better treatments for a wide range of ills on Earth, from cancer to asthma, infections to high cholesterol. To that end, Merck Research Laboratories will be growing crystalline monoclonal antibodies on the space station or molecules designed to attach to other molecules in the body to help fight various diseases. Microgravity is an ideal environment for growing crystals that are "larger, more uniform and higher purity than Earth-grown crystals," said Paul Reichart, an associate principal scientist at Merck. Depending on their success, he said, such antibodies might one day be manufactured in space.

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More science heading to the International Space Station - Daily Press - Daily Press