By Gabe Bullard
Louisville, KY – Saturday, an unmanned Japanese spacecraft will deliver three payloads to the International Space Station on behalf of Kentucky Space. Each payload contains a small lab experiment.
Kentucky Space sent several payloads to the space station last year. President Kris Kimel says more missions will be flown this year.
"We expect in 2011 to fly probably 4-6 times to space station on a variety of launch vehicles, everything from the NASA shuttle to the Japanese transfer vehicle, the Russians still use the Russian automated vehicle and also the European launch vehicle."
Kentucky Space did not develop the experiments launching Saturday. They were organized by various schools and companies from across the county. They will test, among other things, the growth of plants that could be used for food on future space missions.