Sheila Nielsen-Preiss participates in a space station and mission science briefing in NASA Kennedy Space Center's Press Site auditorium in Florida.

Sheila Nielsen-Preiss, cell biologist at Montana State University, participates in a space station and mission science briefing in NASA Kennedy Space Center's Press Site auditorium in Florida.

The briefing provided media with an overview of the experiments and payloads scheduled for launch on NASA's first Commercial Resupply Services, or CRS-1, mission to the International Space Station. Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, built both the mission's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. Launch is scheduled for 8:35 p.m. EDT on Oct. 7 from Space Launch Complex 40 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. SpaceX CRS-1 is an important step toward making America’s microgravity research program self-sufficient by providing a way to deliver and return significant amounts of cargo, including science experiments, to and from the orbiting laboratory. NASA has contracted for 12 commercial resupply flights from SpaceX and eight from the Orbital Sciences Corp. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/living/launch/index.html. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett