SpaceX's Dragon returns to Earth

At 12:05pm PT on May 18, 2014, SpaceX’s Dragon splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about 300 miles west of Baja California, after a full four weeks at the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX engineers will unload nearly 3,500 lb of cargo and science samples for return to NASA over the coming days and weeks.

 

Investigations included among the returned cargo could aid in better understanding the decreased effectiveness of antibiotics during spaceflight, improve antibiotic development on Earth, and could lead to improvements in sustainable agriculture. Another experiment launched aboard Dragon seeks to determine the cause of a depression in the human immune system while in microgravity.

 

The Falcon 9 launch vehicle with the Dragon orbiter began the CRS-3 resupply mission to the ISS on April 18, 2014. This mission marked Dragon’s fourth visit to the space station and third official cargo resupply mission for NASA. Dragon is the only space station resupply spacecraft capable of returning large amounts of cargo to Earth. 

 

The mission was the third of at least 12 cargo resupply trips SpaceX plans to make to the space station through 2016 under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services contract.