CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – A SpaceX capsule headed back to Earth on Wednesday with precious science samples from NASA’s one-year space station resident.
The Dragon left the International Space Station in the morning, bound for an afternoon splashdown in the Pacific, a few hundred miles off the Southern California coast. The station’s big robot arm set the Dragon free over Australia. The capsule had been at the station for a month, dropping off supplies as well as an experimental, inflatable room that will pop open in two weeks.
British astronaut Timothy Peake bid farewell to Dragon on behalf of the station’s entire six-man crew.
“Dragon spacecraft has served us well, and it’s good to see it departing full of science,” Peake radioed from 250 miles up. “We wish it a safe recovery back to Planet Earth.”
Nearly 4,000 pounds of items fill the Dragon, including blood and urine samples from astronaut Scott Kelly’s one-year mission. Kelly returned to Earth in March and has since retired from NASA. Researchers will use the medical specimens to study how the body withstands long journeys in space, in preparation for an eventual mission to Mars in the 2030s.