The landing off the coast of Florida is scheduled for Monday around 1:00 p.m. (5:00 p.m. GMT)
The first fully private mission dubbed Ax-1 to visit the International Space Station (ISS), made up of three businessmen and a former NASA astronaut, is due to leave the flying lab where they spent on Sunday. more than two weeks, heading for Earth.
A SpaceX capsule is scheduled to undock from the ISS at 8:55 p.m. Eastern Time (00:55 GMT Monday), and begin the return trip to a splashdown off the coast of Florida, scheduled for Monday around 1:00 p.m. (5:00 p.m. GMT). .
The four men — three clients who paid tens of millions of dollars each, and former Spanish-American astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria — were originally scheduled to spend just eight days on the ISS.
But their departure had to be postponed several times due to bad weather conditions.
The American Larry Connor, at the head of a real estate company, the Canadian Mark Pathy, boss of an investment company, and the ex-Israeli pilot Eytan Stibbe, co-founder of an investment fund, had taken off April 8 from Florida. They had arrived on the ISS the next day.
On board, they carried out a whole series of experiments, in partnership with research centres. These related to aging or even heart health. They were also able to try out a headset recording cognitive performance in weightlessness, according to the Station’s logbook, published on a NASA blog.
NASA has already formally approved the principle of a second mission, AX-2.
Monday will be the fifth landing of a manned Dragon capsule. SpaceX now regularly transports NASA astronauts to the ISS.