SpaceX's Dragon cargo craft came back down to Earth on Friday, wrapping up the company's ninth contracted cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station for the U.S. space agency NASA.
The unmanned spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at 11:47 a.m. EDT (1547 GMT), approximately 326 miles (525 kilometers) west of Baja California, where it will be recovered and put on a ship for transportation to a port near Los Angeles, NASA said.
Dragon is returning more than 3,000 pounds (1360 kilograms) of cargo and science samples, some of which will be removed at the port and returned to NASA within 48 hours, the space agency said.
Among the experiment samples returning are those from the Heart Cells study, which is looking at how microgravity affects human heart cells, a knowledge that may help advance understanding of deep space missions including the journey to Mars.
Another experiment NASA mentioned is the Mouse Epigenetics study, which explored how microgravity altered gene expression and DNA in 12 male mice and their future offspring.
Dragon is currently the only space station resupply spacecraft able to return a significant amount of cargo to Earth. The spacecraft lifted off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on July 18 and was released from the space station's robotic arm on Friday morning.
