In a reverse to the series of events played out on May 25 to capture and berth SpaceX's Dragon capsule, the International Space Station Expedition 31 crew detached the history-making spacecraft from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony node at 3:07 a.m. CDT (0807 GMT) on Thursday (May 31).
The Dragon spacecraft was attached to the space station for 5 days, 16 hours and 5 minutes.
NASA astronaut Joe Acaba, working with fellow flight engineers Don Pettit and André Kuipers, first released the bolts holding the Dragon in place on the station and then, using the robotic arm, moved the commercial spacecraft away from the outpost, setting up its release at 4:35 a.m. CDT (0935 GMT) for the return to Earth.
Once out of the vicinity of the station, the SpaceX team in Hawthorne, Calif., will run Dragon through about five hours of orbital operations before commanding it to a splashdown, targeted for 10:44 a.m. CDT (1544 GMT), for recovery off the California coast.