A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule will leave the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday morning (Aug. 18), and you can watch it live.
The robotic Dragon is scheduled to depart the orbiting lab Thursday around 11:05 a.m. EDT (1505 GMT). Watch the action live in the window above, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency (opens in new tab). Coverage will begin at 10:45 a.m. EDT (1445 GMT).
The Dragon launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on July 14 and arrived at the ISS two days later with about 5,800 pounds (2,630 kilograms) of supplies and scientific hardware for the occupants of the orbiting lab.
Related: SpaceX’s Dragon: 1st private craft to reach the space station
The freighter is scheduled to come back to Earth in an ocean splashdown off the Florida coast on Friday (Aug. 19), NASA officials said. It’s packed for the return trip with roughly 4,000 pounds (1,815 kg) of experiments and other gear for researchers to analyze.
Dragon’s current mission is called Commercial Resupply Services 25, or CRS-25 for short. As that name suggests, it’s the 25th contracted cargo flight that SpaceX has flown to the ISS for NASA.
SpaceX also holds a separate NASA deal to fly astronaut missions to and from the orbiting lab, which it does with the crewed version of Dragon. SpaceX is in the middle of the fourth of these astronaut missions, called Crew-4, and is scheduled to launch Crew-5 toward the end of next month.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
