The SpaceX Dragon freight craft pulls back from the spaceport station minutes after undocking from the Harmony modules forward port during an orbital sunrise. Credit: NASA TV
At 11:00 a.m. EDT (8:00 a.m. PDT) on Friday, August 19, flight controllers on the ground sent out commands to release the uncrewed SpaceX Dragon spacecraft from the forward port of the International Space Stations Harmony module. The station was flying about 259 miles over the Pacific Ocean at the time of release at 11:05 a.m
. The Dragon spacecraft effectively left the spaceport station one month after reaching the orbiting lab to provide about 5,800 pounds of freight and crew products, consisting of around 4,000 pounds of clinical investigations.
Today, ground controllers at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, will command a deorbit burn. After returning to Earths atmosphere, the spacecraft will make a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida. NASA TV will not relay the de-orbit splashdown and burn, and updates will be posted on the firms spaceport station blog site.
Dragon got to the spaceport station on July 16, following a launch 2 days earlier on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the companys 25th industrial resupply services mission to the area station for NASA.
By NASA
August 20, 2022
