SPACE reports that at 9:05 a.m EST Tuesday, a SpaceX Cargo Dragon capsule conducted “its first-ever autonomous undocking from” the ISS. It “will take about 36 hours for the SpaceX Dragon to return to Earth. The spacecraft is expected to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday (Jan. 13), though NASA and SpaceX will not broadcast the splashdown live.” NASA said in a statement, “Dragon will conduct a deorbit burn at 7:37 p.m. EST to begin its re-entry sequence into Earth’s atmosphere. Dragon is expected to splash down west of Tampa off the Florida coast about 8:27 p.m. EST.”
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Tag: Dragon capsule
Four Astronauts Returning from ISS on SpaceX Crew Dragon Capsule
CNN reports, “Three NASA astronauts and a European astronaut are returning home from the International Space Station, capping off their six-month mission during which they worked alongside Russian cosmonauts and hosted the first all-private crew to visit the orbiting outpost.” CNN reports the astronauts “climbed aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule after midnight and detached from the space station in the early hours of Thursday morning,” and will “spend all day Thursday free flying through orbit as their spacecraft maneuvers closer to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere.” The capsule “will streak back into the atmosphere while traveling at more than 22 times the speed of sound” and then “deploy parachutes and float to a splashdown landing off the coast of Florida.”
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