A NASA resupply spacecraft named in honour of late astronaut Kalpana Chawla was on way to the International Space station (ISS) on Saturday with nearly 8,000 pounds of scientific investigations, technology demonstrations and commercial products, and a new space toilet is part of the cargo.

Its features improve on current space toilet operations and help NASA prepare for future missions, including those to the Moon and Mars.

"The Universal Waste Management System (UWMS) demonstrates a compact toilet and the Urine Transfer System that further automates waste management and storage. The smaller footprint of the UWMS supports a possible increase in the number of crew members aboard the space station, as well as planning for future exploration missions," NASA said in a statement on Saturday.

A new crop of vegetables was also headed to the space station.

While previous experiments have grown different types of lettuces and greens aboard the orbiting laboratory, the "Plant Habitat-02" investigation adds radishes to the mix, cultivating seeds to see how different light and soil conditions affect the growth.

"The findings could help optimise growth of the plants in space, as well as provide an assessment of their nutrition and taste".

A Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply spacecraft launched on an Antares rocket was scheduled to arrive at the space station around 5.20 a.m. on Monday.

Chawla, who dedicated her life to understanding flight dynamics, lost her life during the STS-107 mission when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentering Earth's atmosphere in 2003.

Kalpana Chawla was born in Karnal, Haryana on March 17, 1962.

She received a bachelor's of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the Punjab Engineering College in India in 1982. She then moved to the US to pursue her education.

Chawla began her career at NASA in 1988 as a powered-lift computational fluid dynamics researcher at the Ames Research Center in California. Her work concentrated on the simulation of complex air flows encountered by aircraft flying in "ground-effect."
(IANS)