WASHINGTON COUNTY, Fla. – NASA and SpaceX have announced that the crew of Axiom Mission 3, also known as Ax-3, is scheduled to return to Earth on Saturday. The SpaceX dragon capsule will detach from the International Space Station at 6:05 a.m. Saturday and splash down later that evening off the Florida coast, according to the agency’s online announcement. [EXCLUSIVE: Join News 6 Insider for free | PIN IT! Share your photos]
The team of four astronauts was launched from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A on January 18. The crew includes Walter Villadei from Italy as the pilot, Michael López-Alegría from Spain as the commander, along with mission specialists Marcus Wandt from Sweden and Alper Gezeravcı from Turkey, making it the first all-European crew to be sent to the space station. The crew has spent the past 14 days performing various research experiments at the space station. On Friday morning, astronauts aboard the space station publicly thanked the Ax-3 crew for their time onboard.
After conducting a series of departure burns to move away from the space station, the Dragon will carry out multiple orbit-lowering maneuvers, jettison the trunk, and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere to splash down off the coast of Florida approximately 13 hours later on the same day, as stated by SpaceX on its website. NASA and SpaceX are planning to livestream the undocking and splashdown on their respective social media platforms.
Later this month, NASA and SpaceX will launch Crew-8 to the International Space Station, with the targeted launch date set for no earlier than February 22. To stay updated on space news, use the form below to subscribe to the ClickOrlando.com space newsletter, delivered every Monday. Copyright 2024 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.
