A commercial Dragon cargo capsule wrapped up a four-week stay at the International Space Station after a successful splashdown at the Pacific Ocean on Monday evening.
The 17th resupply mission for NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services to the space station arrived at the orbiting laboratory on May 6, two days after the predawn launch from Cape Canaveral aboard a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
The Dragon cargo spacecraft delivered 5,472 pounds (2,482 kilograms) of supplies and experiments to the space station, including a $110 million NASA instrument mounted outside the space station to monitor carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. The mission also carried a payload package sponsored by the US Air Force with experiments in X-ray communications, space-based supercomputing, plasma measurements and attitude control and determination.
Dragon was detached from the space station’s Harmony module using the lab’s Canadian-built robotic arm, controlled by the mission control. After completing a total of three burns to separate itself from the space station, Dragon ignited its Draco thrusters for the deorbit burn to slower the spacecraft and its altitude for Earth re-entry. Upon re-entry, Dragon is carrying more than 4,200 pounds of cargo from the space station in its pressurized cabin.
Although SpaceX and NASA did not stream the re-entry and splashdown of Dragon live on their streaming platform, SpaceX had confirmed that the Dragon capsule had a good splashdown at the Pacific Ocean after deploying its main parachutes during descent.
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