Updated 2:03 p.m. ET, Thursday, May 31
After completing the first-ever docking of a private spacecraft with the International Space Station, the ambitious private U.S. company SpaceX is today attempting to do the same thing in reverse by disconnecting its Dragon cargo vessel from the station and piloting it back to Earth, for a planned parachute landing in the Pacific Ocean.
SpaceX undocked the Dragon from the space station at 5:49 a.m. ET on Thursday morning. Since then, the company’s mission controllers at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California, have been piloting the craft away from the station and plan to fire its de-orbit thrusters and begin the re-entry process at 10:51 a.m. ET.
During re-entry, Dragon is expected to jettison its trunk around 11:09 a.m. E.T., an empty, unpressurized container that will in later missions be used to carry additional cargo back. Currently, the Dragon’s pressurized hold is stocked with about 1,400 pounds of cargo to be returned from the space station.
The Dragon is supposed to deploy parachutes at 11:36 a.m. ET and splash down at 11:44 a.m. ET into an open expanse of the Pacific Ocean some 709 miles southwest of Los Angeles.
Watch a taped video of the descent here NASA TV:
Already, SpaceX has three recovery ships floating near the expected splashdown point, ready to retrieve the craft. A 185-foot-long barge equipped with a crane will be used to pluck the Dragon capsule out of the ocean.
The successful completion of this stage of the mission is no cakewalk, but if completed as planned, it would bolster SpaceX’s ambitions to become NASA’s de-facto mode of transport for cargo and crew to and from the International Space Station, proving that SpaceX has what it takes not only to get up to the station, but back as well.
SpaceX has previously returned the Dragon from an orbital test flight once before, in December 2010. The company aims to make its Dragon capsules re-usable, though NASA has ordered new Dragon capsules for upcoming missions.
Right now, NASA relies on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get American astronauts to the station.
But NASA in 2006 awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract for 12 missions to the International Space Station, of which about $300 million has already been paid out. The successful docking was SpaceX’s first mission to the International Space Station.
Late update: SpaceX and NASA confirmed that the Dragon successfully splashed down into the Pacific Ocean at 11:42 a.m. ET, some 500 miles off the coast off the Baja California peninsula, 27 degrees latitude, 120 degrees longitude, or about right on target.
NASA had a P3 plane tracking the descent, and although clouds in the vicinity of the splashdown site made it initially difficult to locate Dragon, NASA’s mission control announcer said on the livestream that the planes had spotted the Dragon’s opened red and white chutes and the recovery fleet of boats had successfully made contact with the capsule.
Second late update: Here’s a screenshot from NASA TV’s live stream of the view of a P3 airplane’s thermal camera, capturing the SpaceX Dragon’s descent after the capsule’s chutes were deployed:
And here’s a screenshot of the Dragon capsule floating in the Pacific Ocean. Views have been blurred throughout NASA’s coverage of the return and recovery due to clouds in the vicinity.
Third late update: NASA TV has ceased live coverage of the Dragon retrieval, but will air a live press conference with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and NASA officials, recapping the mission, at 2 p.m. ET.
Fourth late update: Added NASA taped video of the splashdown.
