SpaceX Dragon Spacecraft Leaving Space Station Friday: Watch It Live

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft hangs outside the International Space Station's Cupola module. The craft was there during the company's eighth resupply mission to the station, photographed by NASA astronaut Tim Kopra in April. (Image credit: NASA)

Early Friday morning (Aug. 26), SpaceX's robotic Dragon cargo spaceship will separate from the International Space Station, ferrying essential science specimens on a nearly 6-hour journey back to Earth.

You can watch the spacecraft leave the station live online on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV. NASA's coverage begins at 5:45 a.m. EDT (0945 GMT), and astronauts are scheduled to release the spacecraft from the station's robotic arm at 6:10 a.m. EDT (1010 GMT).

The craft arrived at the space station last month, bringing nearly 5,000 lbs. (2,270 kilograms) of tools and supplies to the space station astronauts. It also bore in its trunk the first International Docking Adapter, which NASA astronauts Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins installed on the station last week. The adapter will allow future spacecraft, including a crewed version of the Dragon, to autonomously dock with the station instead of needing to be grappled by the robotic arm.

"Dragon delivered numerous science experiments July 20 that the Expedition 48 crew immediately unloaded and began working on," NASA officials said in a blog post. "Two of those experiments set to return on Friday include the Heart Cells study and Mouse Epigenetics. That research explored how microgravity affects human heart cells and alters gene expression and DNA in mice."

On Sept. 6, Williams and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin will leave the space station in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and head back to Earth after a five-and-a-half-month stay.

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Sarah Lewin started writing for Space.com in June of 2015 as a Staff Writer and became Associate Editor in 2019 . Her work has been featured by Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Quanta Magazine, Wired, The Scientist, Science Friday and WGBH's Inside NOVA. Sarah has an MA from NYU's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and an AB in mathematics from Brown University. When not writing, reading or thinking about space, Sarah enjoys musical theatre and mathematical papercraft. She is currently Assistant News Editor at Scientific American. You can follow her on Twitter @SarahExplains.