Off the wire
• U.S. stocks open higher ahead of Fed chair's speech  • G20 summit offers translation service in 14 languages  • 1st Ld-Writethru: Three detained after China telecom fraud fatality  • China to release new plan for consumer goods standards  • Chinese, Vietnamese coast guard authorities meet for cooperation  • Roundup: Rwandan central bank downplays economic effect of weakening currency  • 1st LD Writethru: France's top administrative court suspends burkini ban  • Xinhua editor-in-chief praises BRICS media cooperation  • Evacuation in besieged Syrian town Darayya must respect humanitarian law: UN  • Two arrested after China telecom fraud fatality  
You are here: 　 Home

SpaceX's Dragon departs space station with science samples, cargo

Xinhua, August 26, 2016 Adjust font size:

A commercial cargo ship, operated by private U.S. space firm SpaceX, left the International Space Station on Friday morning, carrying back more than a ton of cargo and science samples, including 12 mice.

The unmanned Dragon spacecraft was detached from the Earth-facing side of the space station's Harmony module Thursday night and then released from the orbital laboratory's robotic arm at 6:11 a.m. EDT (1011 GMT), U.S. space agency NASA said.

The capsule, packed with 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg) of cargo and science samples, is currently scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean about 11:47 a.m. EDT (1547 GMT), approximately 326 miles (525 km) west of Baja California, Mexico.

Following the splashdown, Dragon will be recovered from the ocean and put on a ship for transportation to a port near Los Angeles, where some cargo, including research payloads, will be removed and returned to NASA within 48 hours, the space agency said.

Dragon delivered numerous science experiments on July 20 that space station astronauts immediately unloaded and began working on. NASA said one of those experiments returned aboard Dragon is a heart cells study, which explored how microgravity affects human heart cells.

Another experiment NASA mentioned in particular is the mouse epigenetics study, which explored how microgravity alters gene expression and DNA in 12 male mice.

Currently, Dragon is the only resupply spacecraft able to return to Earth intact. Endi