Axiom's private astronauts wraps up mission to space station

Xinhua
31 May 2023, 04:05 GMT+10

LOS ANGELES, May 30 (Xinhua) -- SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft carrying Axiom Space's four private astronauts undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday and is heading home.

The Dragon spacecraft autonomously undocked from the ISS at 11:05 a.m. Eastern Time Tuesday.

After performing a series of burns to move away from the space station, Dragon is scheduled to conduct multiple orbit-lowering maneuvers, jettison its trunk, and re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

The spacecraft is targeting a splashdown off the coast of Panama City, Florida, later Tuesday at about 11:04 p.m. Eastern Time.

Aboard the spacecraft are astronauts Peggy Whitson, John Shoffner, Ali Alqarni, and Rayyanah Barnawi, who flew to the space station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 21.

The SpaceX Dragon will return to Earth with more than 300 pounds of science and supplies, including NASA experiments and hardware, according to NASA.

The mission, codenamed Ax-2, is Axiom Space's second all-private astronaut mission to the ISS following the first mission in 2022.

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