Dragon prepares to fly back to Earth.
After just shy of one month in space, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is preparing for its return to Earth tomorrow.
Today, space station crewmembers finished loading Dragon with 3,700 pounds of cargo scheduled for recovery. Hatches between the two vehicles were sealed ahead of tomorrow’s release from the station, which is scheduled for 2:09 pm EST.
The deorbit burn is scheduled for 7:00 PM EST, with splashdown occurring 44 minutes later at 7:44 PM EST.
Tuesday will be a busy day for the company, having two major operations occurring almost simultaneously. A Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket is scheduled to launch NASA’s DSCOVR mission at 6:05 PM EST. The vehicle’s first stage will perform a reentry burn in a second attempt to land the rocket on a seaborne landing barge.
Less than an hour after the Falcon’s landing attempt, Dragon will splash down off the coast of Baja California.
The CRS-5 mission launched on January 10th and arrived at the space station two days later. It is the company’s fifth scheduled resupply flight to the orbiting laboratory under the Commercial Resupply contract.
