This week, the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft will leave the ISS after a short one-month stay. It will carry the results of scientific experiments carried out by the ISS crew in orbit, which will separate from the space station on Wednesday, December 20, and splash down the Atlantic Ocean in the sea off the coast of Florida through the Earth's atmosphere.
NASA will broadcast the process of separating the spacecraft live, and here are the details of the live stream. Due to unfavorable weather conditions in the sea area off the coast of Florida, the separation of the dragon has been postponed several times. Although there were no astronauts on board, NASA wanted to make sure the spacecraft could return safely and conveniently**. As a cold front passed over the sea off the coast of Florida, NASA postponed the launch until Tuesday and then again until Wednesday.
If the weather improves, the dragon will separate on Wednesday afternoon. "The joint team continues to assess weather conditions in order to determine the best chance of autonomous separation after the passage of a cold front in the sea area off the coast of Florida," NASA said in an update. ”
Some of the spacecraft's experiments will be packed in refrigerated crates containing biological samples that need to be kept cold. A total of 3,500 pounds of research and hardware were packed into Dragon, including garbage bags that needed to be removed from the ISS.
The process of detaching Dragon from the ISS can be seen on the NASA TV channel, which is available for free. The livestream begins on Wednesday, December 20 at 4:45 p.m. ET and the split time is scheduled for 5:05 p.m. ET (2:05 PT).
You can choose to go live on NASA's YouTube channel (which is all day long, NASA TV), or use the ***NASA embedded at the top of this page for more details of the event, or you can stream it through the recently launched NASA+ service.
While the livestream won't show the Dragon's splash process, if you'd like to follow the event throughout, you can check out NASA's space station blog.
post by tom