SpaceX left to ISS with ants, ice cream and a robotic arm on board

Avocados, lemons and ice cream are part of a fresh food supply for the seven astronauts currently on the ISS, AP reported.

Other items are sent as objects of space research. For example, one of the experiments will study how tomatoes and other plants grow in zero gravity. Samples of concrete and solar panels were also subjected to weightlessness. Ants will become the subject of study of the behavior of tunnel insects in space. Saltwater shrimp will be investigated to see if crustaceans can be grown in space to provide astronauts with fresh protein.

A human-sized robotic arm from Japanese startup Gitai, Inc. which also flew to the ISS, will be used for equipment repairs and other service tasks normally performed by the astronauts themselves. The robot's developers believe that future models will be able to independently move in space to repair satellites, build lunar bases and extract resources from the lunar surface.