SpaceX Dragon Capsule Returning To Earth Today At 11:44 ET

The SpaceX Dragon Capsule has already given all of his space dorks swollen groins by being the first commercial-thingy to dock with the ISS. Now it is going to return home, collect the roses laid at its feet, and tongue-screw all of our mothers. We are fine with this.

Boing Boing:

The  SpaceX Dragon, having successfully berthed with the International Space Station, is on its way back home. Last week the space vehicle became the first privately-built and operated spacecraft to reach the ISS. Dragon is targeted to land in the Pacific Ocean, about 500 miles west-southwest of Los Angeles, at approximately 8:44 AM PT/11:44 AM ET tomorrow. The vehicle’s return voyage, from ISS departure to splashdown, will be  webcast on NASA TV  starting at 3:30AM ET/12:30 AM PT.

From  a NASA update:

 The Expedition 31 crew of the International Space Station spent much of the day Tuesday working with the SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicle, reviewing procedures for the departure of the first commercial spacecraft to visit the station and packing it with items for return to Earth.

Dragon, which delivered 1,014 pounds of non-critical cargo on its demonstration flight to the station, was cleared unanimously Tuesday by the station’s Mission Management Team for unberthing early Thursday. In reverse order of how Dragon was captured and berthed Friday, the crew will use the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm to detach the vehicle from the Earth-facing port of the station’s Harmony node at 4:05 a.m., move it away from the station and release it at 5:35 a.m. for return to Earth. The SpaceX team in Hawthorne, Calif., will run Dragon through about five hours of orbital operations before commanding it to a splashdown for recovery off the California coast.

That is forty-four minutes from the publication of this baddie! Get yourself onto the stream and dig on it for me, for I shall be embroiled in fuzzy notion called work.