A SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday afternoon to wrap up a one-month journey to the International Space Station, returning to Earth with 3,700 pounds of equipment and science research, News 6 partner Florida Today reports.
Among the 1,300 pounds of experiment on board were more than 1,000 tubes of blood, urine and saliva collected from former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly before his yearlong ISS mission ended in March.
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NASA will analyze those biological samples, as it does for all its astronauts, to learn more about the long-term effects of microgravity on the human body. Kelly’s physiology also will be compared with samples that were taken on the ground from his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, another former astronaut.
Also packed on the Dragon were protein crystal experiments flown by drug company Eli Lilly that could aid the design of cancer drugs. And NASA engineers will look forward to studying a spacesuit that forced a January spacewalk to be cut short when Tim Kopra reported a water bubble forming in his helmet.
That spacesuit glitch showed NASA hasn’t yet solved the cause of water leaks that endangered a spacewalker in 2013.
The resupply mission that concluded Wednesday was the first by a Dragon in a year, due to a Falcon 9 rocket failure last June during a cargo launch. The Dragon is critical to ongoing station operations and science research because no other spacecraft can return large amounts of cargo to Earth.
The Dragon launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on April 8, starting a flight that saw SpaceX successfully land a Falcon 9 booster on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean for the first time (a feat the company repeated last week on an unrelated mission).
The Dragon berthed at the station two days later with about 7,000 pounds of cargo that included the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, a prototype habitat designed by Bigelow Aerospace that is expected to be inflated outside the outpost later this month.
After departing the station Wednesday morning, the Dragon circled Earth several times before firing its thrusters around 2 p.m. to start its drop from orbit. The spacecraft's unpressurized "trunk" split away as planned before the capsule entered the atmosphere.
Drogue and main parachutes deployed to set up a gentle splashdown just before 3 p.m., about 260 miles southwest of Long Beach, California. Boats were deployed to recover the capsule and return it to shore so time-sensitive research could be collected within a day.
SpaceX and NASA are targeting a late June launch from Cape Canaveral of the company's next resupply mission, SpaceX's ninth of up to 20 planned under contract worth up to $3.1 billion.