The Dragon began this particular journey July 18 at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
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Williams will be completing his fourth space mission and hold the NASA record for cumulative days in space. Once installed, the worldwide docking adapter will enable commercial ships to dock at the ISS.
The spacecraft brought two global docking adapters and a space-based DNA sequencer, which is capable of identifying microbes, diagnosing diseases and evaluating crew member’s health to the ISS, according to NASA. This is to find out the long term effects of space exploration to astronauts. “So any time you would have something for diagnosing a disease, or our bone and muscle degeneration up here, you can actually look at the sequencing data to understand that”. The space station has been occupied continuously since November 2000.
The Dragon is the only spacecraft flying today that can return large amounts of cargo to Earth. That is vital to scientists who want to manually examine specimens from their experiments, and for engineers eager to troubleshoot and fix faulty equipment that could be launched again to the space station on a later mission.
Among the experiment samples returning are those from the Heart Cells study, which is looking at how microgravity affects human heart cells. Now, some of those experiments are on their way back home. Everyone else’s cargo ships are filled with trash and burn up on re-entry.
The Dragon spacecraft departs the International Space Station early Friday. The mice will be dissected, and their sperm will be used for in-vitro fertilization of mouse embryos on Earth.
In Mouse Epigenetics, researchers are exploring altered gene expression and DNA by tracking changes in the organs of male mice that spend one month in space, and examining changes in the DNA of their offspring.
The pod is believed to have been loaded with around 3000 pounds of research and gear. Mission Control thanked the astronauts for their effort, then added, “To the Dragon recovery team, fair winds and following seas”.
Undocking was performed according to plan, at 10:10 GMT.
SpaceX’s Dragon cargo spacecraft has safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off of Baja California, Mexico. The descent and splashdown will not be broadcast live.
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SpaceX’s Dragon made its grand return to Earth this morning.
