![\"2016-08-17-231421\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/2016-08-17-231421-350x238.jpg\")
While Dragon was beginning her pursuit of the ISS, the first stage was completing the second successful landing on the LZ-1 pad back at the Cape.<\/p>\nSpaceX\u2019s CRS-9 Dragon spacecraft departed from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, following a highly successful Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission to the orbital outpost. Known as End Of Mission (EOM) operations, Dragon\u2019s safe return was marked by a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean later in the day.<\/p>\n
\nSpaceX CRS-9 EOM:<\/p>\n
Dragon\u2019s journey into space began just over a month ago, following a flawless launch from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.<\/p>\n
While Dragon was beginning her pursuit of the ISS, the first stage was completing the second successful landing on the LZ-1 pad back at the Cape.<\/p>\n
A few days later, Dragon entered the Station\u2019s back yard and prepared to be caught by the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS).<\/p>\n
ISS Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Dr. Kate Rubins \u2013 working in the Robotic Work Station (RWS) in the Cupola lab \u2013 extended the \u201cbig arm\u201d toward Dragon\u2019s grapple fixture, before carefully translating the cargo-laden craft into Node-2 Harmony\u2019s nadir port.<\/p>\n
With the hatch opened later that day, the ISS crew began removing the array of supplies \u2013 totaling of 1,790 kg (3,946 lb) \u2013 inside the Dragon\u2019s pressurized section.<\/p>\n
This included 370 kilograms (816 lb) of supplies and provisions for the crew, 280 kg (617 lb) of spare and replacement parts for the space station, one kilogram (2.2 lb) of computer equipment, 127 kg (279.9 lb) of hardware to support EVAs and 54 kilograms (119 lb) of equipment for the Russian segment of the station.<\/p>\n
Space Technology (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n Another 930 kilograms (2,050 lb) of cargo capacity is dedicated to scientific research, including a Biomolecule Sequencer which will attempt to sequence DNA in an attempt to demonstrate whether this is possible in the space environment.<\/p>\n The International Docking Adapter (IDA) is a piece of hardware designed to convert the US Segment\u2019s old Shuttle-era docking ports to a new docking system, thus allowing them to accept the upcoming commercial crew vehicles which will all use the updated docking system design.<\/p>\n The CRS-9 Dragon provided the ride uphill for IDA-2, allowing it to be removed from her trunk and installed during a robotics operation and via EVA-36 \u2013 conducted by Williams and Rubins.<\/p>\n To kick off the homecoming, the long sequence of events \u2013 that ultimately led to Dragon safely bobbing the Pacific Ocean \u2013 began on Thursday with the unberthing of Dragon from the Node 2 Nadir CBM, via the release of 16 bolts around the CBM berthing collar on the ISS side, performed in four sets of four bolts to ensure even unloading on the CBM interface.\n<\/p>\n Dragon was manouvered to the release position approximately 30 feet below the ISS. She was left in this position for the night \u2013 known as the parking position.<\/p>\n Friday\u2019s ops began with Dragon in the release position, ahead of the time for Dragon and the ISS to part ways.<\/p>\n Rubins, aided by Takuya Onishi of JAXA, squeezed the trigger on the Rotational Hand Controller (RHC) on the RWS to release the snares holding the SSRMS Latching End Effector (LEE) to the Dragon Flight Releasable Grapple Fixture (FRGF) \u2013 effectively \u201cletting go\u201d of Dragon.<\/p>\n Click here for more Dragon Articles: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/tag\/dragon\/<\/p>\n This occurred at 10:11 UTC \u2013 although the timing was subject to variation, based on communications and lighting conditions.<\/p>\n The larger of the three burns was then conducted to send Dragon outside of the approach ellipsoid, at which point SpaceX controllers in MCC-X took full control of the mission.<\/p>\n Following the completion of departure burns, Dragon conducted a free-flying phase on-orbit for just under five hours, during which time she completed a critical action \u2013 the closure of the GNC bay door, to which the FRGF is mounted \u2013 before conducting a de-orbit burn at around 14:56 UTC.<\/p>\n The umbilical between Dragon and its Trunk was disengaged, prior to the Trunk separating from the Dragon capsule.<\/p>\n As the spacecraft entered Entry Interface (EI) she was protected by her PICA-X heat shield \u2013 a Thermal Protection System (TPS) based on a proprietary variant of NASA\u2019s phenolic impregnated carbon ablator (PICA) material \u2013 designed to protect the capsule during Earth atmospheric re-entry, and is even robust to protect Dragon from the high return velocities from Lunar and Martian destinations.<\/p>\n Three main recovery boats will soon arrive on station, with fast boats racing to meet the Dragon shortly after she hits the water, allowing for the recovery procedures to begin. The vehicle will be powered down and then hooked up to the recover assets.<\/p>\n Dragon will be transported to the port of Los Angeles, prior to a trip to Texas for cargo removal.<\/p>\n The cargo return \u2013 otherwise known as the downmass capability \u2013 is one of Dragon\u2019s star roles following the retirement of the Shuttle fleet.<\/p>\n Although the spacecraft doesn\u2019t get close to the capability of the orbiters, she will still return with 3,000 pounds of science samples from human research, biology and biotechnology studies, physical science investigations and education activities.<\/p>\n Known as late loading, the ISS crew were busily loading the final items into Dragon\u2019s pressurized section during Thursday.<\/p>\n (Images: via NASA, SpaceX, L2\u2019s SpaceX Dragon Mission Special Section and L2 renders by Nathan Koga. The full gallery of Nathan\u2019s (SpaceX Dragon to MCT, SLS, Commercial Crew and more) L2 images can be *found here*))<\/p>\n (Click here: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/ \u2013 to view how you can support NSF and access over 6,000 gbs of content).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SpaceX\u2019s CRS-9 Dragon spacecraft departed from the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, following a highly successful Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission to the orbital outpost. Known as End Of Mission (EOM) operations, Dragon\u2019s safe return was marked by a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean later in the day. SpaceX CRS-9 EOM: Dragon\u2019s journey into space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30152,"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":[2304,1395,233,316],"class_list":["post-38976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-crs","tag-dragon","tag-iss","tag-spacex"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38976"}],"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=38976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"2016-06-23-002650\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/2016-06-23-002650-350x259.jpg\")
In Dragon\u2019s trunk section was a key payload that will help her big sister \u2013 Dragon 2 \u2013 dock with the ISS when the United States regains its domestic crew launch capability via the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) missions.<\/p>\n![\"2016-08-25-234030\"](\"\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/2016-08-25-234030-350x221.jpg\")
Dragon was then pulled away from the ISS via the use of the SSRMS.<\/p>\n![\"CRS-2](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Z318.jpg\" "\\"CRS-2")
With the SSRMS retracted safely clear, Dragon conducted three departure burn to depart to the vicinity of the ISS, edging away from the orbital outpost, with small thruster firings to push down the R-Bar.<\/p>\n![\"Dragon](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Z3110.jpg\" "\\"Dragon")
The 10 minute deorbit burn was successfully conducted by the spacecraft\u2019s Draco thrusters.<\/p>\n![\"Dragon](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Z417.jpg\" "\\"Dragon")
Once at the required velocity and altitude, Dragon\u2019s drogue parachutes were deployed, followed by Dragon\u2019s main parachutes, easing the vehicle to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California at around 15:47 UTC.<\/p>\n