Update for 12:30 pm ET: The detachment of the Ax-1 astronaut crew from the International Space Station has been postponed until Sunday, April 24, due to bad weather at SpaceX. The unloading is now aimed at 20:55 EDT on Sunday (00:55 25 April GMT), with the descent scheduled for Monday at 13:00 EDT (17:00 GMT).
The first all-private mission of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) is about to head home and you can watch the departure live.
A SpaceX Dragon capsule carrying the four crew members of Mission Ax-1 is scheduled to leave the orbital laboratory today (April 23rd) after a two-week stay. The hatches between Dragon and the ISS will close around 16:30 EDT (2030 GMT), and the SpaceX ship will disembark a little over two hours later.
You can watch these stages live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly through the space agency. Closing of the hatch closure will start at 16:15 EDT (2015 GMT) and the webcast for detachment will start at 18:15 EDT (22:15 GMT).
Live updates: Private mission Ax-1 to the space stationRelated: Amazing photos of the Ax-1 private space launch
If all goes according to plan, the Dragon capsule, called Endeavor, will burst off the coast of Florida on Sunday (April 24) at 13:46 EDT (1746 GMT). You can follow this action live here with the kind assistance of Axiom space, the company that organized the Ax-1 mission. The Axiom webcast will begin at 12:45 a.m. EDT (1645 GMT) on Sunday.
Ax-1 is commanded by former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Allegria, who is now Axiom’s vice president of business development. The other three crew members are paying customers – American Larry Connor, Canadian Mark Patti and Israeli Eitan Stibe.
Ax-1 launched on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 8 and arrived at the ISS a day later. The mission was due to leave the orbital laboratory on Tuesday (April 19th), but bad weather in the spray area postponed the departure for a few days.
This delay affected the astronauts’ next SpaceX mission, the Crew-4 flight to NASA. Crew-4 was supposed to take off on Saturday, but will now start no earlier than Tuesday (April 26). NASA officials say they want a two-day window between the launch of the Ax-1 and the launch of the Crew-4 to allow time for data analysis and other preparations.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow it on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or on Facebook.
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