Dragon SpX-12 (CRS-12), CREAM - Falcon 9 - Kennedy LC-39A - 14.08.2017 16:31 UTC

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SpaceX‏Подлинная учетная запись @SpaceX 8 мин. назад

Dragon has been released from the @Space_Station! Three departure burns are now underway.

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Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 4 мин. назад

Departure Burns, and a little dance at the end as she departed the approach ellipsoid and left the KOS (Keep Out Sphere).

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SpaceX‏Подлинная учетная запись @SpaceX 5 мин. назад

The three departure burns to move Dragon away from the @Space_Station are complete.

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SpaceX‏Подлинная учетная запись @SpaceX 38 сек назад

Dragon will re-enter Earth's atmosphere in ~5 hours. Splashdown at 10:15 a.m. EDT, 14:15 UTC.

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SpaceXUpdates‏ @SpaceXUpdates 4 мин. назад

The De-Orbit burn will occur at 1:41pm UTC (9:41am EDT) and the Splashdown is currently targeted for 2:14pm UTC (10:13am EDT) #CRS12

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09/17/2017 12:03 

Coming up in a few hours, the Dragon spacecraft will close the door to its guidance, navigation and control bay around 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT).

Ignition of the capsule's thrusters is set for approximately 9:24 a.m. EDT (1324 GMT) for an appoximately 10-minute deorbit burn. Splashdown a few hundred miles southwest of Long Beach, California, is scheduled for 10:14 a.m. EDT (1414 GMT).

NASA Television coverage of the Dragon resupply flight has ended. SpaceX does not plan to provide live coverage of splashdown, but you can check back here for updates on the status of the mission as we receive information.

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https://spaceflight101.com/dragon-spx-12-return-to-earth/

Packed with Science, SpaceX Dragon Begins Homecoming with Successful ISS Departure
September 17, 2017

The SpaceX Dragon is making its homecoming after almost 34 days off the planet on Sunday, capping a successful mission that facilitated the shipment of world-class science to the International Space Station and the return of research gear and samples eagerly awaited by scientists on Earth to finally understand the structure of a protein implicated in Parkinson's disease, reveal how long-duration space flight affects blood vessels in the brain and eyes, and examine bio-engineered lung tissues grown on ISS.

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Photo: NASA TV

The Dragon SpX-12 spacecraft was unberthed fr om its Earth-facing port at the orbital laboratory Saturday night and was set free at 8:40 UTC on Sunday, breathing fire again after sitting idle at ISS for nearly 32 days. Firing its thrusters, Dragon began moving away fr om the orbiting complex with some 1,720 Kilograms of return cargo loaded into its pressurized cargo compartment.

A rocket-powered braking maneuver is planned to put the Dragon on course to a blazing re-entry – to be followed by a parachute-assisted descent toward a planned 14:14 UTC splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Baja, California.


Dragon arrives at ISS on August 16 – Photo: Sergey Ryazanskiy

The twelfth regular Dragon mission – the last in the original Commercial Resupply Services Contract with NASA – ran like clockwork up to the craft's departure fr om ISS, beginning on August 14 with liftoff fr om Florida atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Loaded with 2,910 Kilograms of cargo, Dragon enjoyed a smooth ten-minute ride into orbit atop the two-stage rocket with the vehicle's first stage making a powered return to the Cape for touchdown at Landing Zone 1, giving SpaceX another booster in excellent condition for future re-use.

Separated fr om its launch vehicle, Dragon headed off on a two-day rendezvous with ISS culminating in a straight-up approach to the complex on August 16 with a robotic capture marking Dragon's arrival at its orbital destination. The craft was berthed to the Harmony module later that day and a very eager ISS crew pushed into hatch opening procedures the same day and also managed to complete a good chunk of the internal cargo transfer work within the first 24 hours of Dragon's tenure at ISS.


Rodent Habitat – Image: NASA

The Dragon SpX-12 spacecraft was loaded with 1,652 Kilograms of pressurized cargo, broken down in 916kg of research gear, 339kg of maintenance hardware, 220kg of crew supplies and 83kg of spacewalk and computer equipment. The mission set a record for the most amount of science cargo delivered by any previous ISS visiting vehicle.

Taking a ride aboard the Dragon were two groups of Mice – one aboard the Rodent Habitat under U.S. operation and the other in Japan's Mouse Habitat Unit, participating in a study of musculoskeletal changes caused by extended stays in microgravity. Rodent Research 9 – the sixth RR flight to ISS – combines three studies into one experiment, looking at how long-duration space flight affects the structure of cerebral arteries in the brain, studying micro-vascular and tissue remodeling in the eye – a cause of space-induced visual impairment, and determining the scope of knee and hip joint degradation during long-duration space flight.

The 20 mice – unlike some of their predecessors – were lucky enough to have a return ticket and were among the time-critical items packed into Dragon on Saturday before its hatch was closed.

>> Dragon SpX-12 Cargo Overview

The SpX-12 mission also delivered to ISS a Spaceborne Supercomputer for a critical technology demonstration mission that aims to validate the design of an onboard computer for the spacecraft of the future. At present, computers used on crewed and uncrewed spacecraft are several generations behind modern machines on Earth and feature heavy radiation shielding.


Protein Crystal Growth – Image: NASA

The Spaceborne Computer experiment will show, over the duration of one year, a software-driven technique to protect it from radiation – potentially enabling a generation of light, highly-capable computers that can support the autonomy needed by missions venturing out into the distant reaches of the solar system.

Another high-profile study on the SpX-12 mission was Protein Crystal Growth 7 – exploiting the unique environment found on ISS to grow pristine crystals of a protein shown to play a major role in Parkinson's disease. Protein crystals grown in space are much larger and more uniform than those produced under the influence of gravity which allows their full structure to be determined via laboratory methods on Earth, providing insight into their function and helping in the development of inhibitor therapies.

Other experiments riding up on Dragon aimed to grow bio-engineered lung tissue, track how potentially harmful microbes spread in space, and examine how plants protect themselves from stress factors encountered in space; also aboard the spacecraft were new plant pillows for the Station's Veggie facility to continue working on in-space cultivation techniques needed for missions to distant targets.


CREAM ISS Package – Photo: ISS-CREAM

Bolted into the Trunk Section of the Dragon was a 1,250-Kilogram particle detector package to expand the Space Station's role as an orbiting astrophysics laboratory. CREAM – the Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass Instrument – took up residence outside the Station's Kibo Module from wh ere it will measure incoming particles at ultra-high energies, further up in energy than can be measured by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer 2, the Station's dark matter hunter.

Researchers hope to use data from CREAM to help explain some of the peculiarities in the cosmic energy spectrum – in particular an unexplained decline in the observed spectrum wh ere particle theory would not predict such a decrease, a question that has been puzzling scientists for decades.

>> Article: CREAM Installed on ISS

With Dragon's mission winding down, the ISS crew placed the final time-critical return items into the pressurized compartment of the spacecraft before closing its hatch and buttoning up the hatchway of the Harmony module for an overnight unberthing by releasing 16 bolts and opening capture latches. Once free from Harmony, Dragon was maneuvered into its release position by ROBO controllers on the ground in the overnight hours to set up for an early release of the spacecraft.


Photo: NASA TV

Setting up shop in the Station's Cupola was ESA Astronaut Paolo Nespoli, the prime robotics operator in charge of releasing the spacecraft, backed up by Expedition 53 Commander Randy Bresnik who handled communications with the ground and commanding of Dragon via the COTS UHF Communications Unit. Snares within the arm's latching end effector opened up at 8:40 UTC, setting Dragon free for its return journey.

Paolo Nespoli retracted Canadarm2 to a safe distance and Dragon recovered from Free Drift, pulsing its Draco thrusters three minutes after release to initiate a slow opening rate down the Station's R-Bar, or radial vector. Another separation maneuver accelerated Dragon down the R-Bar and out of the Station's Keep Out Sphere followed by the third and largest separation burn that set Dragon on a course to pull out in front of ISS and open a gap of around 150 Kilometers before the deorbit burn.


Photo: NASA TV

With Dragon confirmed on a safe path away from ISS, NASA ended its involvement in the mission with SpaceX having the responsibility of getting Dragon safely back to Earth and ship return cargo back to NASA.

Dragon is planned to fire up at 13:24 UTC on a deorbit burn of just under ten minutes to slow by some 100 meters per second and transition from an orbital flight path to a sub-orbital arc intercepting the atmosphere at a pre-determined location from wh ere the craft can reach its parachute opening target. Around four minutes before hitting the atmosphere, Dragon will jettison the expendable Trunk Section which is not holding any external disposal payloads on this mission and is facing a fiery re-entry as it lacks the protection of a heat shield.

Encountering the dense atmosphere, Dragon's PICA-X heat shield has to endure temperatures up to 1,600 degrees Celsius and Dragon is programmed to constantly modify its lift to optimize the flight path toward the planned parachute opening target – having shown good accuracy since its very first landing from an ISS mission.


Image: SpaceX

Friction in the atmosphere slows Dragon to a subsonic speed of 240 meters per second at which point two drogue chutes deploy some 13.7 Kilometers in altitude to further reduce the vehicle's speed for the deployment of the three large main chutes. Under the three mains, Dragon transitions to a vertical descent and slows to a landing speed of around 20 Kilometers per hour for splashdown around 340 Kilometers west of San Diego.

Dragon's landing will start the typical race against the clock to ensure time-critical payloads make it to NASA within 48 hours of touchdown. Loaded onto a ship, Dragon will be transported to the Port of Long Beach wh ere time critical items are removed and shipped to their home institutions while Dragon continues by road to SpaceX's McGregor test site in Texas wh ere the remaining cargo items will be removed followed by post-flight processing to allow the Dragon spacecraft to enter refurbishment for a potential future flight.

Closing out its third mission to ISS this year, SpaceX is moving toward the Dragon SpX-13 mission currently looking at a tentative launch target No Earlier Than December, depending on the Station's cargo needs as well as other scheduling concerns on the ISS side.

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SpaceX Dragon CRS-12 Spacecraft Departs International Space Station

Space Videos

Опубликовано: 17 сент. 2017 г.

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Paolo Nespoli‏Подлинная учетная запись @astro_paolo 7 мин. назад

.@AstroKomrade and I just released a #Dragon! Now heading back to Earth with lots of science experiments aboard



7 мин. назад

.@AstroKomrade e io abbiamo appena liberato #Dragon! Ora è di ritorno sulla Terra con un sacco di esperimenti

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https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2017/09/17/dragon-released-carrying-science-and-gear-back-to-earth/

Dragon Released Carrying Science and Gear Back to Earth
Posted on September 17, 2017 at 4:55 am by Mark Garcia.


The SpaceX Dragon (far right) begins its departure fr om the International Space Station after being released from the grips of the Canadarm2 robotic arm. Credit: NASA TV

At 4:40 a.m. EDT, Expedition 53 Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli of ESA (European Space Agency) and International Space Station Commander Randy Bresnik used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release the SpaceX Dragon after it was detached from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module.

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Dragon's thrusters will be fired to move the spacecraft a safe distance from the station before SpaceX flight controllers in Hawthorne, California, command its deorbit burn. The capsule will splash down at about 10:14 a.m. in the Pacific Ocean, wh ere recovery forces will retrieve the capsule and its more than 3,800 pounds of cargo and research. A variety of technological and biological studies are returning in Dragon. Splashdown will not be broadcast on NASA TV.

NASA and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the non-profit organization that manages research aboard the U.S. national laboratory portion of the space station, will receive time-sensitive samples and begin working with researchers to process and distribute them within 48 hours of splashdown.

Dragon, the only space station resupply spacecraft able to return to Earth intact, launched to the space station Aug. 14 from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and arrived at the station Aug. 16 carrying more than 6,400 pounds of supplies and cargo on SpaceX's twelfth commercial resupply mission to the station for NASA.

Get breaking news, images, videos and features from the station on social media at:

https://www.facebook.com/ISS
http://instagram.com/iss
http://www.twitter.com/Space_Station

This entry was posted in Expedition 53 and tagged dragon, European Space Agency, International Space Station, NASA, Roscosmos, science, spacex on September 17, 2017 by Mark Garcia.

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U.S. Commercial Cargo Ship Departs Space Station

NASA

Опубликовано: 17 сент. 2017 г.

The SpaceX/Dragon cargo craft departed the International Space Station Sept. 17, one month after delivering more than three tons of supplies and scientific experiments for the station's residents. Expedition 53 Flight Engineer Paolo Nespoli of the European Space Agency and station Commander Randy Bresnik used the Cnadarm2 robotic arm to release Dragon after it was detached from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module. Dragon was scheduled to move to a safe distance away from the station for its engine to conduct a deorbit burn, enabling it to drop out of orit for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific southwest of Long Beach, California. Dragon was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 14, arriving at the orbital outpost Aug. 16.

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SpaceX‏Подлинная учетная запись @SpaceX 36 сек. назад

Dragon's de-orbit burn is complete and trunk has been jettisoned. Pacific Ocean splashdown in ~30 minutes.

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09/17/2017 16:48



SpaceX confirms the completion of Dragon's deorbit burn, and the spacecraft has jettisoned its disposable unpressurized trunk segment. The capsule will dip into the atmosphere on a trajectory flying from northwest to southeast over the Pacific Ocean, heading for splashdown at 10:14 a.m. EDT (1414 GMT).

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Chris B - NSF‏ @NASASpaceflight 2 мин. назад

Coming up on Entry Interface. Dragon will be protected by her PICA-X (Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator) TPS (Thermal Protection System).