{"id":16908,"date":"2014-10-22T01:32:13","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T17:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/return-of-spacexs-dragon-cargo-craft-delayed\/"},"modified":"2014-10-22T01:32:13","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T17:32:13","slug":"return-of-spacexs-dragon-cargo-craft-delayed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/return-of-spacexs-dragon-cargo-craft-delayed\/","title":{"rendered":"Return of SpaceX\u2019s Dragon cargo craft delayed"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"SpaceX's
SpaceX\u2019s Dragon spacecraft is attached to the International Space Station\u2019s Harmony module. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rough seas in the Pacific Ocean will keep SpaceX\u2019s Dragon cargo capsule in space a few days longer than planned, with the unpiloted supply ship\u2019s return to Earth now set for Saturday hauling a load of research specimens from the International Space Station back to the ground.<\/p>\n

Landing was scheduled for Tuesday in a splashdown zone in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja California, but officials opted to delay the return to Saturday due to high sea states in the area, NASA said Monday.<\/p>\n

Berthed at the space station\u2019s Harmony module since Sept. 23, the SpaceX cargo craft delivered nearly 5,000 pounds of supplies and experiments, including a 3D printer, spacesuit batteries, a small satellite deployer, and a $26 million NASA instrument to help meteorologists study the intensification of hurricanes.<\/p>\n

On the way back to Earth, the spacecraft\u2019s pressurized cabin will contain refrigerated blood, urine and saliva samples, along with a habitat with 10 rodents, plants grown on the space station, materials specimens, student experiments, cameras and other gear selected for return to Earth for inspection and refurbishment.<\/p>\n

The Dragon\u2019s return trip will carry approximately 3,300 pounds of station hardware and experiments packed by astronauts.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s resupply freighter is the only spacecraft capable of returning significant amounts of cargo to Earth. Russia\u2019s Soyuz crew capsule can land with limited cargo, and the space station\u2019s other supply ships from Orbital Sciences Corp., Russia, Europe and Japan are designed to burn up during re-entry to dispose of trash.<\/p>\n

Operating on commands from mission control, the space station\u2019s robotic arm will grapple the Dragon cargo capsule and remove it from the Harmony module\u2019s Earth-facing docking port early Saturday.<\/p>\n

Astronauts Reid Wiseman and Barry \u201cButch\u201d Wilmore will oversee the robot arm\u2019s release of the 12-foot-diameter solar-powered Dragon spaceship at 9:56 a.m. EDT (1356 GMT) Saturday.<\/p>\n

The Dragon\u2019s Draco maneuvering thrusters will conduct three burns to depart the vicinity of the space station, then the craft will close and latch the door to its navigation bay before setting up for a de-orbit burn at 2:43 p.m. EDT (1843 GMT).<\/p>\n

The spaceship will jettison its unpressurized trunk section and solar panels a few minutes later to burn up in the atmosphere, while the main module re-enters cocooned inside a specialized ablative heat shield developed by NASA and SpaceX to withstand temperatures reaching up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit on its hypersonic approach to a landing zone off the coast of Baja California.<\/p>\n

Dual drogue parachutes will deploy when the capsule passes an altitude of about 45,000 feet, then three 116-foot-diameter main chutes will open to slow down the craft\u2019s descent to a gentle 10 mph for splashdown at 3:39 p.m. EDT (1939 GMT).<\/p>\n

A maritime recovery team will be on standby to recover the capsule from the Pacific Ocean and ferry it back to port in Long Beach, Calif., where SpaceX will hand over time-sensitive samples to NASA for delivery to science teams around the world.<\/p>\n

The Dragon\u2019s splashdown will end SpaceX\u2019s fourth commercial resupply flight to the space station, which began with a middle-of-the-night launch Sept. 21 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s next cargo mission to the orbiting research lab is set for launch around Dec. 9.<\/p>\n

Orbital Sciences, NASA\u2019s other cargo transportation provider, is preparing its third operational mission to the space station for liftoff as soon as Oct. 27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SpaceX\u2019s Dragon spacecraft is attached to the International Space Station\u2019s Harmony module. Credit: NASA Rough seas in the Pacific Ocean will keep SpaceX\u2019s Dragon cargo capsule in space a few days longer than planned, with the unpiloted supply ship\u2019s return to Earth now set for Saturday hauling a load of research specimens from the International […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4254,1395,233,265,316,3524],"class_list":["post-16908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crs-4","tag-dragon","tag-iss","tag-space-station","tag-spacex","tag-spacex-4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16908\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}