The SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule launched April 18 and on April 20 arrived at the space station with about 5,000 pounds of supplies. Now it’s time to back home and it is returning home with 3,564 pounds of science samples, crew supplies and vehicle hardware.
NASA astronaut and station commander Steve Swanson organized a 58-foot robotic arm that drew the Dragon from its Harmony node port and then released the capsule into space 266 miles over the South Ocean of Australia.
Swanson radioed to the Earth “Thanks to everybody who worked this Dragon mission; it went very well It’s also very nice to have a vehicle that can take your science equipment, and maybe someday even humans, back to Earth.”
NASA has also signed a $1.9 billion deal with Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. to make eight unmanned cargo flights with its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule. Antares is scheduled to make its first test flight in mid-April, and the rocket should blast Cygnus toward the station on a demonstration mission later this year if all goes well, Orbital officials have said.