The Hughes-Fulford Lab is now headed to Long Beach, CA!
Splashdown is projected to occur on May 18. It is approximately 5.5 hours from undocking to splashdown. A boat will go out to sea to pick up the Dragon capsule, where all the samples and payloads will be removed and stored at the appropriate temperatures. The T-cell Activation in Aging samples will be stored in a -80C freezer. The boat then takes a couple of days to return to shore and all samples are transferred to the Long Beach airport. We will pick up our samples directly from the aircraft as many of the other payloads will be flying on to Johnson Space Center in Houston.
We'll bring the samples (still in the Experiment Units) back to our lab in San Francisco. Together with Kayser Italia, who is flying in from Italy, we will disassemble all the hardware and collect the samples in tubes to freeze back. KI will be taking the hardware back to their lab in Italy to prepare for SpaceX-5.
