A SpaceX spacecraft returning to Earth with four astronauts might make its arrival known overnight with a sonic boom.
The Dragon capsule is due to splash down in the Pacific off the coast of California early Tuesday morning. The spacecraft could produce a sonic boom as most of Southern California sleeps.
In May, a SpaceX Dragon capsule triggered a sonic boom as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. The boom rattled a widespread part of Southern California in the pre-dawn hours.
Early Monday, the crew of Axiom Mission 4 left the International Space Station aboard the Dragon capsule. The craft undocked at about 4:15 a.m. California time ahead of its estimated 22.5-hour journey home.
Dragon will slowly move into an orbital track that will return crewmembers to Earth with more than 580 pound of cargo, including data from dozens of experiments. Splashdown was expected at about 2:31 a.m. California time, according to Axiom Space.
Depending on cloud cover, the spacecraft’s return might be visible to the naked eye in part of Southern California.
Click here to watch Axiom Space coverage.
The four astronauts, commander Peggy Whitson, pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, and mission specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu, made about 288 orbits around Earth during their approximately 18 days on the ISS. The mission marked the3 first time in more than four decades that India, Poland, and Hungary launched national astronauts into space