The crews of the Expedition 70 and Axis 3 missions (Ax-3) headed to Mission Control on Friday for a farewell ceremony, with the four private astronauts aiming to depart on Saturday morning (undocking was subsequently postponed to Monday, February 5 due to weather conditions off the Florida coast). It only took the orbiting residents on the International Space Station half a day to pack up SpaceX's Dragon Freedom spacecraft, and then went to bed early to prepare for the spacecraft's undocking.

Eleven crew members representing Expedition 70 (red shirts) and Axiom Space 3 (dark blue spacesuits) gathered for a farewell ceremony and a call to mission controllers on Earth. Image source: NASA Television

The private Ax-3 astronauts thought they were about to have their last day at the orbiting outpost after two weeks of scientific and educational activities. A four-person team led by Commander Michael López-Alegría was scheduled to evacuate the Crew Dragon spacecraft through the front hatch of the Harmony capsule at 6:05 a.m. ET on Saturday. However, due to weather conditions off the coast of Florida, NASA, AxiomSpace and SpaceX have now locked in the undocking date of Axiom Mission 3 to no later than Monday, February 5.

The picture shows that on January 20, SpaceX's "Dragon Freedom" spacecraft, carrying the four-member "Axiom Mission 3" (Ax-3) crew, was approaching the International Space Station 260 miles above southern India. Image source: NASA

After undocking, Lopez-Alegría will head to the landing site with pilot Walter Villadei and mission specialists Alper Gezeravcı and Marcus Wandt. Mission managers will receive final weather reports before allowing the Ax-3 quartet to make a final landing off the coast of Florida.

Station Commander Andreas Mogensen from the European Space Agency (ESA) helps the Ax-3 crew wrap up mission activities and help reconfigure the orbiting laboratory for standard crew operations. NASA flight engineers Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara also joined in to retrieve space station emergency equipment from the Dragon spacecraft and load scientific hardware into the returning spacecraft.

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus space cargo vehicle approaches the International Space Station to deliver more than 8,200 pounds of scientific experiments, crew supplies and space station hardware to the Expedition 70 crew. Both spacecraft were orbiting 262 miles above the Middle East when this photo was taken. Image source: NASA

Earlier, O'Hara worked with astronaut Satoshi Furukawa from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to transfer research samples from the newly arrived Cygnus cargo spacecraft to a science freezer on the space station. Furukawa subsequently replaced the research hardware supporting botany and biology experiments in the Columbus laboratory module, with minimal astronaut intervention.

Astronauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub load trash and discarded items into the Progress 85 supply ship, docked in the rear port of the Zvezda service module, before it wraps up its cargo mission and unmoores later this month. Flight engineer Konstantin Borisov configured various experimental hardware while on duty. Borisov repaired a camera that observes the Earth's atmosphere in ultraviolet wavelengths, charged hardware that records the crew's interactions with mission controllers from around the world, and then deactivated medical equipment that continuously monitors the crew's blood pressure.

Compiled source: ScitechDaily