Miami, Apr 15 (EFE).- A SpaceX Dragon capsule with almost 2,000 kilos of scientific material and supplies and which separated from the International Space Station (ISS) this Saturday morning successfully reached the coast of Florida (USA). .
The spacecraft separated at about 11:05 a.m. EST (1505 GMT) from the ISS’s Harmony module, which was cruising 420 kilometers above the Indian Ocean at the time.
Soon after, Dragon fired up its engines to fully begin a six-hour journey to Earth, after spending nearly a month docked in the orbiting laboratory.
The Dragon fell assisted with a parachute in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Tampa, at 4:58 p.m. local time (2058 GMT) and members of the security forces and NASA began transporting the cargo to the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, ensuring minimal exposure of scientific samples to Earth’s gravity.
Inside, the ship carries 1,952 kilos of scientific equipment and material, including samples from experiments carried out on board the station and in microgravity.
The experiments include one that studied the ability to grow plants in space to obtain fresh food, for future long-duration missions, as well as another focused on reducing the risk to astronauts’ cardiovascular health.
The Dragon capsule took off on March 14 powered by a Falcon 9 rocket, both manufactured by the private company SpaceX, from the Kennedy Center and two days later it arrived at the ISS with 2,700 kilos of equipment, supplies and scientific material.
The ship even carried fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as frozen cheese, which was a request from the expedition aboard the orbital laboratory.
The one that culminates today is the twenty-seventh supply mission carried out by Elon Musk’s firm for NASA, under a contract with the special agency that the Boeing company has also signed, which on July 21 expects to send on board the Starliner ship its first manned test mission to the ISS.
