On Thursday, June 29, NASA prepares to receive research samples and hardware as the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft leaves the International Space Station. The agency will live stream Dragon’s docking and takeoff on NASA TV, the NASA app, and online starting at 11:45 a.m. ET.
SpaceX ground controllers in Hawthorne, California will have the Dragon crew disembark from the space-facing port of the station’s Harmony module and start their engines to get a safe distance from the station. Unlink scheduled for 12:05
After re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft will parachute into the Florida coast around 02:30 on Friday, June 30. NASA will not publish the landing, but updates will be posted on the space station agency’s blog.
Dragon will deliver more than 3,600 pounds of materials and science experiments designed to take advantage of the space station’s microgravity to Earth. A tide off the Florida coast allows experiments to be transported quickly to NASA’s space station at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, allowing researchers to collect data with minimal impact of Earth’s gravity on samples.
Science equipment and samples returned during the mission include the GRIP chair – Dexterous Manipulation in Microgravity, used in the ESA (European Space Agency) sponsored GRIP and GRASP (Gravitational References for Sensorimotor Capabilities: Reaching and Grasping) neurological experiments. While GRIP examines how microgravity affects the manipulation of objects, GRASP provides further insight into how the central nervous system adapts to a microgravity environment. Experiments on the space station continued for about six years, and the final tests in orbit ended in early 2023.
Research samples of BioNutrients-2, monoclonal antibodies and Miotones are also returned to Earth for scientific analysis.
Dragon arrived at the station on June 6 as part of SpaceX’s 28th commercial resupply mission for NASA, delivering over 7,000 pounds of research, crew supplies, and station equipment, including two IROSAs, or solar panels, for the deployment of the International Space Station. . The spacecraft was launched on June 5 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center 39A on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Source