A SpaceX Dragon Cargo Ship The first ever automatic docking from the International Space Station took place on January 12, preparing for the return to Earth this week.
Historic event-the first sailing by an untightened American supply ship, at 9:05 am Eastern Time (1405 GMT), SpaceX’s CRS-21 Cargo Dragon was evacuated from the spaceport of the Harmony module. The real-time view of NASA TV showed that the space shuttle was orbiting when it left the space station. This is because both space shuttles were flying high above the South Atlantic Ocean.
NASA astronaut Victor Glover (Victor Glover) said on the space station: “Godspeed, cargo dragon and rescue team.”
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The whole process takes about 36 hours Space X The dragon returned to earth. The spacecraft is expected to splash in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday (January 13), although NASA and SpaceX will not broadcast live. The weight of the spacecraft is 5,200 pounds. (2,500 kg) Scientific experiments and other equipment returned to Earth.
“The dragon will de-orbit and burn at 7:37pm EST [0200 GMT Thursday, Jan. 14] Began to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere.The American Dragon is expected to fall on the Florida coast west of Tampa at around 8:27 p.m. EST [0327 GMT]”, NASA said in a statement.
SpaceX’s upgraded Cargo Dragon capsule can carry 20% more cargo and experiments than the previous spacecraft, which improves the scientific nature of each mission. Previously, all “Dragon” spacecraft were parked on the space station using the Canadian Robot 2 from the outpost, and then they would splash down into the Pacific Ocean-away from NASA’s Science Processing Center at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA said that the new experimental analysis turnaround time will begin within four hours after the splash. NASA and SpaceX initially planned to launch the “Cargo Dragon” over the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of Florida, but bad weather in the landing area caused the flight to be delayed by one day.
The Dragon spacecraft was launched from the 39A launch site on December 6, and arrived at the space station about 24 hours later. This mission is also the first time that two dragons have been docked to the space station at the same time, because the Expedition 64 crew dragon is still in orbit and will return to Earth later this year. The Dragon spacecraft was launched with four astronauts in November for NASA’s Crew-1 mission.
Some of the returned experiments include studies on cardiovascular cells, biofilms that may corrode stainless steel spacecraft structures, technologies to assist emergency navigation in deep space, and a few live mice that are assisting long-term research on why astronauts’ eyesight changes in space.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and Facebook.
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