U.S. cargo spaceship Dragon undocks from ISS
MOSCOW. May 11 (Interfax-AVN) - The cargo spaceship Dragon has undocked from the International Space Station (ISS), the Mission Control Center said.
"In accordance with the flight program of the International Space Station, the automated cargo spacecraft Dragon (SpaceX CRS-8) undocked at 2:02 p.m. Moscow time on May 11, 2016, from the lower node of the Harmony module (Node 2) of the U.S. ISS segment," the statement said.
After the SSRMS robotic arm pulled the automated cargo spacecraft from the station it was released at 4:19 p.m. Moscow time from the robotic arm, and started fulfilling the final phase of its flight that envisages the undocking of the pressurized descent capsule from the spacecraft, its controllable descent, and a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, not far from the U.S. Californian coast.
The cargo spaceship Dragon (SpaceX CRS-8) delivered 3,136 kilograms of various cargoes to the station on April 10, 2016. The cargo included foodstuffs and clothes for crewmembers, equipment, consumable materials for the use onboard the station, as well as the experimental inflatable habitat BEAM (Bigelow Expandable Activity Module) weighing nearly 1,400 kilograms, which was retrieved from the unpressurized cargo container of the spacecraft by the robotic arm, and docked to the Tranquility node module. The module is due to be deployed in the last days of May 2016.
In the history of flights to the ISS, this has been the second case, when six Russian and U.S. cargo spaceships, namely manned spaceships Soyuz TMA-19M and Soyuz TMA-20M, cargo spacecraft Progress MS, Progress MS-02, Cygnus CRS OA-6 and Dragon (SpaceX CRS-8), have been simultaneously docked to the station.