SpaceX CRS-28 Dragon departs International Space Station
CRS-28 Dragon seen as it arrived at the International Space Station June 6, 2023. Credit: NASA
SpaceX’s CRS-28 cargo Dragon spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station after spending just over three weeks at the outpost.
Undocking of the uncrewed cargo spacecraft took place at 12:30 p.m. EDT (16:30 UTC) June 29. Over the last couple weeks it was loaded with some 3,600 pounds (1,600 kilograms) of cargo to be returned to the ground. NASA said this includes critical research samples located inside Dragon’s science freezers.
After backing away from the ISS, the spacecraft began a trajectory that would bring it back to Earth Friday morning, June 30. Following reentry into the atmosphere, the spacecraft will perform a parachute assisted splashdown off the coast of Florida.
It’ll then be picked up by SpaceX recovery ships and transported back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for time-critical experiments to be offloaded.
The spacecraft launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket on June 5 with about 7,000 pounds (3,200 kilograms) of crew supplies, experiments and station hardware. It docked with the space-facing port of the Harmony module a day later.
The iROSA device being unrolled after its installation was completed. Credit: NASA
Over the next couple weeks, its contents were unloaded by the seven-person Expedition 69 crew. Moreover, two ISS Roll Out Solar Arrays, iROSAs, were also removed from the unpressurized trunk section.
During two spacewalks on June 9 and June 15, NASA astronauts Woody Hoburg and Steve Bowen installed the solar arrays, which is part of a yearslong effort to upgrade the outposts power system.
These were the fifth and sixth iROSAs installed since 2021. A seventh and eighth have been approved to be built by Redwire Space and launched by SpaceX in 2025
CRS-28 was the eighth performed under the second Commercial Resupply Services contract with the Dragon 2 cargo spacecraft. It was also the fourth time this specific capsule had visited the ISS.
SpaceX’s next Dragon launch is set to be the Crew-7 mission in August. It’ll transport four people to the space station to replace the Crew-6 astronauts and cosmonaut. Like Crew-6, Crew-7 will spend about six months at the outpost.
The next cargo variant Dragon is expected no earlier than December of this year.
Video courtesy of SciNews
Derek Richardson
Derek Richardson has a degree in mass media, with an emphasis in contemporary journalism, from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas. While at Washburn, he was the managing editor of the student run newspaper, the Washburn Review. He also has a website about human spaceflight called Orbital Velocity. You can find him on twitter @TheSpaceWriter.
