Sam Scimemi director of International Space Station at NASA Headquarters participates in a prelaunch news conference.

Sam Scimemi, director of International Space Station at NASA Headquarters, participates in a prelaunch news conference in Kennedy Space Center's Press Site auditorium in Florida. Also pictured are, from left, Michael Curie, NASA Public Affairs, Bob Cabana, director of NASA Kennedy Space Center, and to Scimemi's right, Mike Suffredini, program manager of International Space Station at NASA Johnson Space Center.

The news conference provided the media with a status on the readiness to launch 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/Jim Grossmann