SpaceX capsule brings station science back to Earth
A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule departed the International Space Station and plunged back to Earth Wednesday, bringing down more than 3,700 pounds of station cargo and research material, including urine, saliva and blood samples collected from Scott Kelly during his recent nearly one-year stay aboard the lab.
The automated Dragon capsule, which arrived at the International Space Station on April 10, was detached from the Earth-facing port of the forward Harmony module and released by the lab's robot arm at 9:19 a.m. EDT (GMT-4).
After moving a safe distance away, the Dragon's braking rockets fired at 2:01 p.m. and the ship plunged back into the discernible atmosphere about a half hour later. After a high-speed descent, three large braking parachutes deployed and the capsule splashed down on target, 261 miles southeast of Long Beach, Calif., at 2:51 p.m.
"Good splashdown of Dragon confirmed, carrying thousands of pounds of @NASA science and research cargo back from the @Space_Station," SpaceX tweeted.
The capsule was launched on April 9, loaded with more than 3.5 tons of cargo, supplies and other equipment, including an expandable module that later was attached to the aft port of the space station's Tranquility module. The Bigelow Expandable Crew Activity Module, or BEAM, will be inflated later this month for two years of tests to determine the viability of such expandable compartments.
After unloading the Dragon, the station crew re-packed it with trash, no-longer-needed gear and research equipment and samples, along with a spacesuit that will be examined by engineers to determine what might have caused a small water bubble that prompted an early end to a spacewalk earlier this year.
The Dragon is the only space station cargo ship capable of bringing significant amounts of cargo and science gear back to Earth.
Completing SpaceX's eighth operational station resupply mission, the Dragon brought back 53 pounds of computer gear, 377 pounds of crew supplies, 602 pounds of spacewalk equipment, 1,137 pounds of vehicle hardware and 1,292 pounds of science gear and samples, including the final batch of blood, urine, saliva and other samples collected during Kelly's stay in orbit.
The samples will be processed and compared with those collected before Kelly's launch last year, during his stay aboard the station and after his return March 1 to better understand the effects of weightlessness and space radiation on long-duration crew members.
SpaceX plans to haul the Dragon capsule back to Long Beach, where personnel were standing by to off-load high-priority items. From there, the spacecraft will be shipped to SpaceX's McGregor, Texas, facility for additional processing.
