The Dragon spacecraft out from the space station to Return Scientific Cargo to Earth

The unmanned SpaceX Dragon spacecraft was ordered to be released from the forward port of the Harmony module of the International Space Station on Friday, August 19 at 11:00 a.m. EDT (8:00 a.m. PDT). When the station was released at 11:05 a.m., it was travelling 259 miles or so over the Pacific Ocean.

One month after landing at the orbiting laboratory to carry around 5,800 pounds of cargo and crew supplies, including about 4,000 pounds of scientific research, the Dragon spacecraft successfully left the laboratory.

A deorbit burn will be ordered by SpaceX’s ground controllers in Hawthorne, California, today. The spacecraft will perform a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida after returning to Earth’s atmosphere. The de-orbit fire and splashdown will not be televised on NASA TV, and the agency’s space station blog will give updates instead.

On July 16, Dragon reached the space station after taking off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida two days earlier. It was the company’s 25th trip providing NASA with commercial resupply services to the space station.