(Updated) SpaceX Dragon cargo craft to depart space station on Jan 9: Watch live

(Updated) SpaceX Dragon cargo craft to depart space station on Jan 9: Watch live
Image Credit: Twitter (@SpaceX)

After completing a 43-day mission at the International Space Station, a SpaceX Dragon cargo resupply spacecraft will undock from the orbiting lab at 5:05 p.m. EST on Monday, January 9. Live coverage of Dragon's undocking and departure will air on NASA Television, the NASA app, and online at 4:45 p.m. EST.

The SpaceX Dragon resupply ship arrived at the station on November 27, 2022, delivering more than 7,700 pounds of research investigations, crew supplies, and station hardware. It will carry back to Earth approximately 4,400 pounds of supplies and scientific experiments designed to take advantage of the space station's microgravity environment.

The spacecraft will land in the ocean off the coast of Florida on Wednesday, Jan. 11, with the help of a parachute. This location enables the experiments to be quickly transported to NASA's Space Station Processing Facility at Kennedy Space Center, so that researchers can collect data with minimal disruption from Earth's gravity.

Astronauts Josh Cassada, Nicole Mann, and Frank Rubio from NASA, along with Koichi Wakata from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), will spend the weekend loading the Dragon spacecraft with important research samples from experiments that have been completed on the space station. These samples will be analyzed on Earth after the Dragon splashes down in the waters off the coast of Florida.

Update 1

The uncrewed SpaceX Dragon spacecraft undocked from the zenith port of the station's Harmony module at 5:05 p.m. and will make a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida on Wednesday, January 11.

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