Crew Packs Dragon With Science Before Tuesday Departure

The SpaceX Dragon is due to leave the International Space Station on Tuesday and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean loaded with critical science and station hardware for analysis. The Expedition 61 crew worked over the weekend and into Monday finalizing cargo transfers.

NASA Flight Engineers Jessica Meir, Christina Koch and Andrew Morgan are carefully packing research samples including live mice inside Dragon for retrieval and analysis on Earth. Morgan and Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency) will close the hatches and conduct leak checks before robotics controllers uninstall Dragon from the Harmony module on Monday night.

Most of the crew will be asleep as Parmitano monitors Dragon’s release from the grip of the Canadarm2 robotic arm on Tuesday at 5:03 a.m. EST. The U.S. space freighter will orbit Earth a few more hours before parachuting to a splash down in the Pacific around 10:41 a.m. NASA TV will be live broadcasting Dragon’s departure starting at 4:45 a.m. Tuesday. Splashdown will not be seen on NASA TV.

The two veteran cosmonauts stayed focused on their Russian task list of space science and systems maintenance today. Flight Engineer Alexander Skvortsov started the day on plumbing duty before cleaning fans and filters. Oleg Skripochka worked on heart research before inventorying station tool kits.