On Wednesday, January 11th, SpaceX successfully completed its 26th cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) with the splashdown of its Dragon spacecraft. The uncrewed Dragon spacecraft undocked from the ISS’s Harmony module at 5:05 pm EST, after spending over a month delivering about 4,400 pounds of scientific investigations and supplies to the orbiting laboratory.
The departure from the ISS came after flight controllers on the ground received commands to undock the spacecraft. At the time of undocking, the ISS was flying at an altitude of 259 miles above the Pacific Ocean. After departing the space station, the Dragon spacecraft re-entered Earth’s atmosphere and made a parachute-assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida.
This mission marked another milestone for SpaceX and its Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. The company has been contracted to deliver cargo to the ISS using its Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rockets since 2012. The Dragon spacecraft used in this mission was launched from SpaceX’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on November 26th, 2022 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.
NASA did not broadcast the splashdown, but updates were posted on social media. This successful mission demonstrated once again SpaceX’s capability and reliability in supporting the ISS and scientific research on board. It’s also a step closer to SpaceX’s goal of developing reusable spacecrafts and enabling human exploration of deep space.
