The SpaceX Dragon vessel will connect to the International Space Station on Wednesday morning carrying a Houston company's technology for tracking maritime ships worldwide, a tool that could help catch illegal fishers, boost the efficiency of port operations and increase safety at sea.

Aerospace engineering company JAMSS America said Monday that its hardware was among almost 5,000 pounds of cargo launched by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Rob Carlson, president of JAMSS America, was among company employees who traveled to Florida for the launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Having his company's product on board made it even more spectacular.

"It's a different feeling," he said, "like there's a part of me in that."

The applied research and development project, called Global AIS on Space Station, will enable ships to be tracked farther from shore, ideally providing a more precise map of global maritime operations.

Ships of a certain size are required to emit a signal that gives their location, vessel type, speed and route. Signals from this automatic identification system, commonly referred to as AIS, are mostly collected through land-based towers that can only track ships near the shore. They can't see vessels in the middle of the ocean.

Some satellites are already tracking these ocean-bound ships on a global scale, but data from the space station would be less scrambled, said Martin Tschir-schwitz, project manager for the GLASS project.

He said this is partly because satellites orbit higher than the space station. They have a wider field of view and collect more signals at once, which can result in the signals sometimes getting jumbled. The space station will be closer, so it will receive fewer signals at a time and should be able to provide more detailed information for each ship.

Being on the space station also could keep the hardware in orbit longer as AIS satellites usually operate in space for a few years, he said.

Specific locations, like the Port of Houston, are expected to get daily updates from the space station. This will be used alongside real-time data from the land-based towers to provide a broader picture of where ships are located.

"They will basically get a global map," Tschirschwitz said.

There are many applications for this technology. Ports can get more accurate details on when ships will arrive. And if there isn't space for an incoming vessel, port officials can ask captains to slow down. The ship will save fuel and the port will run more efficiently, which could help it attract additional business.

It also can detect fishing ships entering zones where they aren't allowed to fish.

Capt. Allan Post, executive director of Marine Education Support and Safety Operations at Texas A&M University at Galveston, said this technology could remove uncertainty from supply chains — giving companies time to quickly adapt if the ship is behind schedule — and help people who are tasked with routing ships in response to bad weather.

"Having the capability to have accurate, real-time data would increase the efficiency of supply chain management and increase the safety factor of life at sea," he said.

The Global AIS on space station project began in September of 2014 when it received a $500,000 grant from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, which manages the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory. The project is led by JAMSS America, but it has many collaborators including the University of Hawaii, Mare Liberum, Flexitech and the Greater Houston Port Bureau.

The Greater Houston Port Bureau is one of the organizations that will evaluate the quality and industry value of data captured from the space station, said Christine Schlenker, director of special projects and communications for the Greater Houston Port Bureau.

Schlenker expects that the data will give the Port Bureau a more global view of maritime operations and enable the nonprofit trade organization to provide better research and data to its roughly 210 member companies.

"This gives us an excellent opportunity to expand our vessel movements research and vessel movements products," she said.

The project's hardware will be aboard the space station for a one-year research phase to see if it meets the company's objectives. After that, JAMSS America wants to continue operating from the space station, potentially for commercial use.

"Our goal is to stay in orbit, stay on the Space Station indefinitely," Tschirschwitz said.