The ISS was flying about 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Pacific Ocean at the time, according to a NASA update<\/a>.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \n The HTV\u2011X1 cargo spacecraft is pictured on Oct. 29, 2025, after its capture by the International Space Station\u2019s Canadarm2 robotic arm. (Image credit: NASA)<\/p>\n The robotic HTV-X is the successor to Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV<\/a>), which flew nine cargo missions to the International Space Station<\/a> (ISS) from 2009 to 2020.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The new freighter launched for the first time on Oct. 25<\/a>, carrying about 9,000 pounds (4,080 kilograms) of food and other supplies to the orbiting lab. On Oct. 28<\/a>, HTV-X1 reached its destination, where it was grappled by Canadarm2 and affixed to the station’s Harmony module.<\/p>\n The arm removed the vehicle from the module on Thursday (March 5), then began positioning it for today’s release.<\/p>\n HTV-X1 will now stay up for a while as a free flyer.<\/p>\n “The HTV-X1 spacecraft will remain in orbit for more than three months acting as a scientific platform for JAXA\u2019s experiments,” NASA officials said in an update on Monday (March 2), referring to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n “Following the deorbit command, the spacecraft will dispose of several thousand pounds of trash during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere<\/a>, where it will burn up harmlessly,” they added.<\/p>\n Three other freighters haul cargo up to the ISS these days as well \u2014 Russia’s Progress<\/a> vehicle, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus<\/a>, and Dragon, which is built by SpaceX<\/a>. Dragon is the only one that’s reusable.<\/p>\n Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. ET on March 6 with the news of HTV-X1’s departure from the ISS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan’s new HTV-X cargo spacecraft departed the International Space Station today (March 6) after a four-month stay. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-325397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"closeup](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SggHFFxetG7n65T6UvUXB5.jpg\")
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