Watch SpaceX’s Crew-6 Dragon depart ISS with 4 astronauts aboard on Sept. 3 after delay (Image Credit: Space.com)
A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft carrying four astronauts will head back to Earth no earlier than Sunday morning (Sept. 3) after a one-day weather delay to wrap up NASA’s Crew-6 mission, and you can watch the action live online for free.
The hatches between the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, named Endeavour, and the International Space Station (ISS) are currently scheduled to close on Sunday around 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT). Endeavour will undock from the orbiting lab shortly thereafter, around 7:05 a.m. EDT (1105 GMT).
You can watch these Crew-6 mission milestones live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA. Hatch-closing coverage will start at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT). There will be a short break after that, and undocking coverage will begin at 6:45 a.m. EDT (1045 GMT).
NASA and SpaceX initially aimed to return the Crew-6 astronauts to on Saturday, but announced a 24-hour delay on Friday morning (Sept. 1). After a weather briefing early Saturday, mission managers decided to press ahead with undocking and splashdown, but only if weather conditions are favorable.
“NASA and SpaceX are proceeding toward undocking at 7:05am ET Sept.3, with a splashdown just after midnight at 12:15am ET Sept.4, off Florida’s coast,” NASA wrote in an update on X (formerly known as Twitter). “Weather conditions for splashdown are improving and will be evaluated ahead of the crew undocking.”
Related: SpaceX Crew-6 and Crew-7 astronaut missions: Live updates
Endeavour will then head back to Earth, ultimately splashing down off the coast of Florida no earlier than 12:15 a.m. EDT (0415 GMT) on Monday (Sept. 4). You can watch that homecoming live here at Space.com as well; coverage will begin Sunday at 11 p.m. EDT (0300 GMT on Monday).
The Crew-6 quartet — NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan Al Neyadi and Andrey Fedyaev of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos — has spent almost exactly six months in orbit; Endeavour docked with the ISS on March 3.
Crew-6 is leaving just a few days after the arrival of another SpaceX mission: The four-person Crew-7 reached the ISS on Aug. 27.
Crew-7 is an even more international affair than Crew-6. The new mission features four astronauts from four different space agencies: Jasmin Moghbeli of NASA, Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, Konstantin Borisov of Roscosmos and Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
