SpaceX’s Crew-5 astronaut mission for NASA is scheduled to depart the Worldwide Area Station on Thursday (March 9), and you may watch the motion dwell.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the Crew-5 quartet — NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, cosmonaut Anna Kikina and Japan’s Koichi Wakata — is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) at 5:05 p.m. EST (2205 GMT) on Thursday, wrapping up 5 months in orbit.
You possibly can watch the Dragon’s departure dwell right here at Area.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the agency (opens in new tab). You may also watch the capsule’s ocean splashdown, which is anticipated to happen round 9:25 p.m. EST on Friday (March 10; 0225 GMT on March 11).
Associated: Auroras, spacecraft mods and more: SpaceX Crew-5 astronauts reflect on their time in orbit
Crew-5 launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Oct. 5, 2022. It was a historic liftoff, making Mann the primary Native American girl to achieve space and Kikina the primary Russian to fly to orbit on a non-public American spacecraft.
The Crew-5 astronauts have spent an eventful 5 months off Earth. They have been handled to some gorgeous auroral displays, for instance, and two Russian automobiles docked to the ISS — a Soyuz crew-carrying craft and a robotic Progress freighter — sprang leaks throughout the spaceflyers’ keep on the station.
Crew-5’s Dragon, named Endurance, was briefly modified to accommodate an additional passenger — one of many three Soyuz astronauts, NASA’s Frank Rubio — in case an emergency evacuation of the ISS have been required. However these mods have been eliminated final month, after Russia launched a replacement Soyuz that can take Rubio and his two Russian crewmates residence to Earth this fall.
There’ll nonetheless be a SpaceX mission on the ISS after Crew-5 departs on Thursday: Crew-6 arrived at the orbiting lab early Friday morning (March 3) aboard the Dragon Endeavour.
The Crew-6 astronauts — NASA’s Woody Hoburg and Stephen Bowen, the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan Al Neyadi and cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev — are scheduled to dwell aboard the ISS for the subsequent six months.
Mike Wall is the writer of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a guide in regards to the seek for alien life. Observe him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
