April 23, 2024

A SpaceX Dragon cargo ship will depart space station today with a ‘cytoskeleton’ on board. Here’s how to watch.

Editors note: The NASA television broadcast above will begin coverage of SpaceXs Dragon CRS-24 undocking at 10:15 a.m. EST (1515 GMT). You can watch live Saturday (Jan. 22) as a SpaceX Dragon resupply ship gets set to rocket thousands of pounds of science back to Earth.Coverage will start at 10:15 a.m. EST (1515 GMT) on NASA TELEVISION, the companys website, agency social media and here at Space.com. The Dragon cargo ship will undock about 25 minutes later at 10:40 a.m. EST (1540 GMT) and return to Earth on Monday.Among the almost 5,000 pounds (2,267 kilograms) of science on board will be a “cytoskeleton” that uses cell signaling to comprehend how the human body modifications in microgravity and a 12-year-old light imaging microscopic lense that is retiring from studying the structure of matter and plants in orbit.While there will be no live protection of the splashdown, the existing target requires Dragon to get here somewhere off the coast of Florida around 12:44 a.m. EST (0544 GMT) on Monday (Jan. 24). Updates on splashdown will come through the space station blog.The SpaceX Dragon CRS-24 cargo ship will undock from the International Space Stations space-facing docking port on the Harmony module on Jan. 22, 2021. (Image credit: NASA) The pill was originally targeting Friday to undock and Saturday to crash, however the procedure was postponed by a day due to poor climate condition for returning.The Dragon spacecraft blasted off on its freight mission, called CRS-24, Dec. 21 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and provided both science and a set of early Christmas provides to the orbiting intricate 2 days later.Dragon is the only freight ship that can fly clinical experiments back to scientists on Earth, as all other such spacecraft burn up in the atmosphere throughout re-entry. Dragon is often used to return biological samples that should be transferred to a scientific facility quickly; sprinkling down in the Atlantic Ocean will enable fast transfer of samples to NASAs Kennedy Space Center in seaside Florida, east of Orlando.Members of the Expedition 66 crew have been evacuating and organizing Dragon products for at least the last two weeks, according to NASAs area station blog site, consisting of swapping out science freezer elements that will host the precious cooled science samples.Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook..