Evacuation of the CRS-29 Dragon cargo spacecraft
At 06:05 Beijing time on December 22 (the same as Beijing time), according to the instructions of the ground controller of SpaceX, the CRS-29 "Dragon" cargo spacecraft unlocked and separated from the forward port of the "Harmony" node module of the International Space Station, and started the return journey to Earth. At the time of the evacuation, the space station was flying at an altitude of about 420 kilometers southwest of Chile. Previously, the evacuation scheduled for the morning of December 15 was delayed by seven days due to the passage of the "cold front".
On this trip, the CRS-29 Dragon cargo spacecraft carried more than 3,500 pounds (more than 1,587.6 kilograms) of scientific research payloads, laboratory hardware and other materials for retrieval and analysis after returning to Earth. After orbit-by-orbit descent flights, the Dragon spacecraft will splash down in the waters off Florida on December 22 with parachute-assisted EST, finally completing the last cargo mission of the year.
At 09:28 on November 10, the Space Exploration Corporation CRS-29 "Dragon" cargo spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center by the "Falcon 9" carrier rocket (B1081.2), and docked at the forward port of the "Harmony" node module of the International Space Station at 18:07 on November 11, sending 2,950 kilograms of various materials to the space station. On this trip, the final flight time of the CRS-29 "Dragon" spacecraft will be about 43 days.
At present, the number of spacecraft parked on the ISS has dropped to 5, including 2 manned spacecraft such as "Soyuz MS-24" and Crew-7 "Dragon" and 3 cargo spacecraft such as "Progress MS-24", "Progress MS-25" and "Cygnus 19", including 3 from Russia and 2 from the United States. It is expected that at 21:05 on the 22nd, "Cygnus 19" will also be released and separated by the robotic arm to evacuate the space station.
Author: Mulan Xingzhou