Thursday, May 31, 2012

SpaceX Dragon to Return Home Today





SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which has successfully docked with the International Space Station on Friday, is scheduled to return to Earth today.

While Dragon was attached to the ISS, astronauts unloaded 1,146 pounds of supplies, including food and other crew provisions. Then they packed the Dragon -- the only spacecraft capable of returning a significant amount of cargo from the space station -- with 1,455 pounds of cargo that will be returned to Earth, including hardware used for experiments, spacewalks and station systems.

[More from Mashable: SpaceX Dragon Makes History, Docks With the ISS [PICS]]


At 4:07 a.m. EDT this morning, the SpaceX Dragon capsule was unberthed from the ISS, and is now preparing for the return.


If everything goes as planned, Dragon should land in the Pacific Ocean at 11:44 a.m., hundreds of miles off the west coast of California.

[More from Mashable: Watch the SpaceX Dragon’s Historic Docking Attempt Live [VIDEO]]


Check out a gallery of photos from the mission tweeted by SpaceX below and our interview with SpaceX’s founder and chief designer Elon Musk here.



SpaceX Dragon Capsule flying in formation with the ISS



Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.



Source & Image : Yahoo

No comments:

Post a Comment