The stay on board the International Space Station of the Ax-3 mission, of which Air Force Colonel Walter Villadei is part, may have come to an end after having been prolonged, due to bad weather, well beyond the expected 14 days: the return it is scheduled for today, starting from 3.05 pm Italian time, but the definitive confirmation will still depend on the weather conditions off the coast of Florida, where the ditching will take place.
Space X communicates this on its website and on X (formerly Twitter).
If everything goes as planned, the ISS will once again host only the 7 members of the Expedition 70 crew, under the command of astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency.
After performing a series of engine starts to move away from the Space Station, the Dragon shuttle will carry out various maneuvers to progressively lower its orbit and get closer to the point chosen for landing.
Before getting any closer, however, the onboard computer will eject part of the shuttle to reduce mass and save propellant.
The final re-entry phase into the Earth's atmosphere will last approximately 12 minutes: during this phase the Dragon will experience significant heating and resistance, which will reduce its speed in order to safely open its parachutes.
The first two will open at an altitude of almost 5.5 kilometers, and will then be followed by four other main parachutes which will deploy just under 2 kilometers from the ground, allowing ditching at a speed of approximately 7.6 meters per second.
The Axiom-3 mission, which includes, in addition to the pilot Villadei, also the commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, the Swede Marcus Wandt of the ESA and the first Turkish astronaut Alper Gezeravci, left on January 19th from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral with a Space X Falcon 9 rocket. It is the third private mission to reach the ISS, after Ax-1 in April 2022 and Ax-2 in May 2023.
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