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SpaceX Cargo Ship’s Departure From ISS Delayed by Bad Weather

SpaceX Cargo Ship’s Departure From ISS Delayed by Bad Weather
SpaceX Cargo Ship’s Departure From ISS Delayed by Bad Weather

SpaceX postponed the departure of its latest Dragon cargo ship from the International Space Station on Jan. 22 by at least a day due to bad weather at its landing site. 
The next undocking attempt could be watched live on Sunday, NASA said.
The Dragon CRS-24 cargo ship was scheduled to undock from the space station at 10:40 a.m. EST (1540 GMT) on Saturday and return to Earth early Monday morning. But bad weather at potential splashdown locations in the Gulf of Mexico off the Florida coast prevented the departure, Space.com reported. 
"SpaceX and NASA have waived off today's planned departure of an upgraded SpaceX Dragon resupply spacecraft due to high winds in the splashdown zones at the Gulf," NASA spokesperson Sandra Jones said during a NASA TV update on Saturday.
There will be no live coverage of SpaceX's Dragon splashdown, though it is expected to occur either late Monday or early Tuesday, weather permitting. Updates on splashdown will come through NASA's space station blog and SpaceX's Twitter page, space.com reported.
The Dragon cargo ship will return nearly 5,000 pounds (2,267 kilograms) of science to Earth when it splashes down, including a "cytoskeleton" that uses cell signaling to understand how the human body changes in microgravity. 
A 12-year-old light imaging microscope that is being retired after more than a decade of use studying the structure of matter and plants in orbit is also on board.
The capsule was originally targeting Friday to undock and Saturday to splash down, but the procedure was delayed by a day due to poor weather conditions for returning. If the Dragon had undocked Saturday morning, it would have splashed down in the wee hours of Monday, according to NASA.
The Dragon spacecraft blasted off on its cargo mission, called CRS-24, on Dec. 21 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and delivered both science and a set of early Christmas presents to the orbiting complex two days later.
Dragon is the only cargo ship that can fly scientific experiments back to researchers on Earth, as all other such spacecraft burn up in the atmosphere during reentry. Dragon is often used to carry back biological samples that must be transferred to a scientific facility quickly; splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean will allow for the rapid transfer of samples to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in coastal Florida, east of Orlando.
Members of the Expedition 66 crew have been packing up and organizing Dragon supplies for at least the last two weeks, according to NASA's space station blog, including swapping out science freezer components that will host the precious refrigerated science samples.
 

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