The mission was contracted by NASA as part of its Commercial Resupply Services program and was launched by SpaceX aboard the 30th flight of the Falcon 9 rocket.

[9] The launch was then put on hold pending investigation of the pad explosion in September 2016, with a tentative date no earlier than January 2017,[10] subsequently set for 18 February.

[1] The Dragon spacecraft rendezvoused with the International Space Station on 22 February, but its approach was automatically aborted by an on-board computer at 08:25 UTC when a data error was reported in its navigation system.

[7] External payloads on the CRS-10 spacecraft are the SAGE III Earth observation experiment and its Nadir Viewing Platform (NVP), and the U.S. Department of Defense's Space Test Program Houston 5 (STP-H5) package including the Raven navigation investigation and the Lightning Imaging Sensor.

[23] The following is a breakdown of cargo bound for the ISS:[7] SpaceX's CRS-10 launch was the "first operational use"[25] of the Autonomous Flight Safety System (AFSS) on "either of Air Force Space Command's Eastern or Western Ranges."

AFSS is replacing "the ground-based mission flight control personnel and equipment with on-board Positioning, Navigation and Timing sources and decision logic.