A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule blasted off from the International Space Station and began returning to Earth Friday, Aug. 19, setting the stage for a splashdown weekend.
The unmanned Dragon The supply ship undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) at 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 GMT) as the two spacecraft cruised 259 miles above the South Pacific Ocean offshore from Hawaii. The spacecraft will return on Saturday August 20, NASA officials have announced.
“Goodbye Dragon, thank you for all the supplies and science,” NASA spacecraft communicator Michael Ellsworth radioed the crew at Mission Control Station Houston. “We look forward to your return to Earth.”
“Congratulations to the team on the successful completion of the SpaceX-25 mission,” NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins replied from the space station. Video of the Dragon’s undocking showed stunning views of the spacecraft pulling away from the ISS during an orbital sunrise.
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The Dragon launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on July 14 and arrived at the ISS two days later with approximately 5,800 pounds (2,630 kilograms) of supplies and science equipment for the occupants of the lab in orbit. NASA and SpaceX originally hoped to undock the Dragon freighter on Thursday, but canceled the departure due to bad weather at its landing site off the coast of Florida.
The freighter must return to Earth Saturday at 2:53 p.m. EDT (6:53 p.m. GMT), NASA officials said. It is packed for the return trip with about 4,000 pounds (1,815 kg) of experiments and other equipment for researchers to analyze. NASA and SpaceX are not expected to livestream the landing, but will likely share updates on social media.
Dragon’s current mission is called Commercial Resupply Services 25, or CRS-25 and SpaceX-25 for short. As the name suggests, this is SpaceX’s 25th contract cargo flight to the ISS for NASA.
SpaceX also has a separate agreement with NASA to fly astronaut missions to and from the orbiting lab, which it does with the crewed version of Dragon. SpaceX is in the middle of the fourth of these astronaut missions, called Crew-4and is expected to launch Crew-5 around the end of September.
Editor’s note: This story was updated on August 19 with confirmation of the successful undocking of SpaceX’s Dragon freighter from the space station.
Mike Wall is the author of “The low (opens in a new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) Or on Facebook (opens in a new tab).