SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule returns home from space station

The unmanned Dragon capsule owned by private U.S. firm SpaceX splashed into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday evening, wrapping up its fifth contracted cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station.

"Dragon splashdown confirmed!" the California-based private company announced through its Twitter account after the capsule splashed in the Pacific Ocean, 259 miles (about 417 kilometers) southwest of Long Beach, California, at about 7:44 pm EST (0044 GMT).

The company's cargo spacecraft Dragon was released from the International Space Station's robotic arm at 2:10 p.m. EST (1910 GMT) to begin a less than six hour journey back to Earth.

According to the U.S. space agency, the spacecraft is returning about 3,700 pounds (about 1,678 kg) of cargo and science samples from the International Space Station. A SpaceX vessel will take the Dragon spacecraft to Long Beach, where some cargo will be removed and returned to NASA.

The splashdown occur within two hours after the private U.S. firm postponed the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket with the Deep Space Climate Observatory once more on Tuesday evening, because of high upper level winds.

Dragon, which was launched aboard a Falcon 9 rocket on Jan. 10, carried about 2.5 tons of supplies and payloads, including materials to support 256 scientific experiments in space.

The mission was the fifth of 12 cargo resupply trips SpaceX will make to the space station through 2016 under a 1.6-billion-U.S.-Dollar NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract.

Besides SpaceX, NASA has also signed a deal with another private company called Orbital Sciences Corp. to supply cargo to the ISS.

Orbital's first two flights went smoothly, but the third failed when the company's Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff in late October. Endi