Dragon Returns to Earth, Extra Cargo Preps, Superior Analysis Underway

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft has returned to Earth stuffed with a number of thousand kilos of science experiments and lab {hardware} for retrieval and evaluation finishing a six-month keep on the Worldwide House Station. The Expedition 74 crew now turns its consideration towards March when two extra cargo spaceships depart the orbital outpost and full their resupply missions. In the meantime, superior house biology and know-how analysis wrapped up the week in house.

Dragon parachuted to a splashdown within the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California at 11:44 p.m. PST on Thursday the place NASA and SpaceX assist personnel awaited the science and cargo-packed spacecraft. Dragon had undocked from the station’s ahead port on the Concord module at 12:05 p.m. on Thursday the place it had been moored since August 25, 2025.

The following cargo craft to finish its station mission is slated to be uninstalled from Concord’s Earth-facing port with the Canadarm2 robotic arm in early March. JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Company) HTV-X1 will then be launched by the Canadarm2 a day later into Earth orbit the place it should full a number of weeks of scientific experiments. HTV-X1 launched on Oct. 25, 2025, from Tanegashima House Middle in southern Japan and was captured with Canadarm2 and put in to Concord Oct. 29.

Flight Engineers Chris Williams, Jessica Meir, and Jack Hathaway, from NASA, and Sophie Adenot from ESA (European House Company) started packing the HTV-X1 on Friday with disposable cargo since JAXA’s spacecraft will reenter Earth’s environment above the south Pacific Ocean for a harmful, however secure reentry. Nevertheless, HTV-X1 will keep in orbit for just a few extra weeks after its launch to check new antenna and photo voltaic cell applied sciences and deploy CubeSats for impartial missions.

A couple of days after HTV-X1 leaves, Canadarm2 will as soon as once more take away one other cargo craft and launch it into Earth orbit. This time, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL trash-filled cargo craft shall be uninstalled from the Unity module’s Earth-facing port and launched shortly afterward for an atmospheric reentry and fiery disposal above the south Pacific. Cygnus XL launched from Florida on Sept. 14 and arrived on the station on Sept. 18 for a robotic seize and set up.

The cosmonauts targeted a lot of their time on Roscosmos analysis actions on the finish of the week. Commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Flight Engineer Sergei Mikaev started their shift attaching electrodes to their chests and measuring their cardiac exercise. Subsequent, Kud-Sverchkov pointed molecular beams at semiconductor crystals to check and observe how they develop in weightlessness. Mikaev jogged on a treadmill for a recurrently scheduled microgravity health analysis.

Flight Engineer Andrey Mikaev dismantled Earth remark {hardware} initially of his shift after an automatic in a single day pictures session. Subsequent, Fedyaev wore digital actuality goggles and responded to computer-controlled visible and audio stimuli to check his sense of stability and orientation in house. Lastly, the two-time station resident explored utilizing synthetic intelligence-assisted instruments to transform speech-to-text to enhance documentation for information and communications with floor controllers.

Study extra about station actions by following the house station weblog, @space_station on X, in addition to the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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February 27, 2026 1:15PM