Dragon Cargo Ship On Its Way Back To Earth From The ISS

The Dragon cargo capsule from SpaceX is making its way back to Earth from the International Space Station. The craft, which undocked at 9:19AM EDT on May 11 is ending its month-long orbital stay on the ISS and is scheduled to make a parachute-aided landing at 2:55 EDT in the Pacific Ocean just west of Baja, California.

British astronaut Tim Peake told Space.com from aboard the flight that the Dragon spacecraft has served them well and that they hope for its safe recovery back to the planet. The ship's undocking will be broadcast by NASA TV, said officials, but the splashdown and recovery won't be.

The Dragon, which was launched atop SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air force Station in Florida on April 8, reached the ISS two days later, with nearly 7,000 lbs worth of supplies, scientific experiments, and gears to the ISS, including the inflatable habitat called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM).

Currently the only orbiting lab that can carry cargo back to Earth, the Dragon can haul about 3,700 lbs of gear in its return trip, including biological samples gathered during Scott Kelly's unprecedented one-year mission, which ended in March.

Scientists can then study the samples and learn more about the effects of long-duration space flights - physiologically and psychologically. This is in part the effort of scientists to help pave way for the possibility of crewed missions on Mars and other distant bodies in space.

The Dragon's launch on April 8 marked SpaceX's eighth cargo mission to the space station. About 10 minutes after liftoff, the first stage of the Falcon 9 spacecraft landed on a robotic ship on the Atlantic Ocean, called "Of Course I Still Love You" which was stationed a few hundred miles off the coast of Florida, making it a milestone landing, being the first-ever rocket that landed on a ship at sea.