The Dragon capsule separates from the International Space Station and begins its return to Earth

On Sunday, the SpaceX Dragon capsule separated from the International Space Station (ISS) with the four crew members of NASA’s Crew-6 mission and began its journey to the coast of Florida.

As planned, the Dragon Endurance spacecraft separated at 7:05 a.m. EDT from the Harmony module and is expected to arrive off the coast of Tampa, West Florida, around 12:07 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 4.

The return flight comes after being delayed by one day due to bad weather at the landing area and marks the end of the crew’s six-month mission to the International Space Station.

Crew-6 members are NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen (mission commander) and pilot Woody Hoburg; Emirati astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedeev.

Shortly before separation, Bowen told mission controllers that it was “a privilege and an honor” to be part of this expedition. “We are approaching 23 years of continuous occupation of the International Space Station, which is absolutely amazing and it was a real honor to be a part of it,” he said.

After taking off on March 2 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (USA), and docking the next day with the International Space Station, the Crew-6 crew conducted scientific research and maintenance tasks in the so-called orbiting laboratory during this period.

“We welcomed the visiting Axiom crew on board, did three spacewalks, did a lot of maintenance, and hopefully leave the space station a little better than we found it,” Hoburgh said this week. during a farewell party.

Members of this mission lived briefly with Crew-7, which installed on the International Space Station on August 27 with its four crew members and temporarily filled the space station with 11 passengers.

Crew-7 will also complete a six-month mission and will be piloted by NASA astronauts Jasmine Mugbeli and Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (ESA), as well as Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA and Konstantin Borisov of the European Space Agency. Russian Roscosmos.