LIVE: Watch Japanese Cargo Ship Leave International Space Station

NASA Television will air live the departure of a Japanese cargo ship from the International Space Station at noon Wednesday, Sept. 4.

Expedition 36 Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA will use the station’s robotic arm to detach the H-II Transport Vehicle (HTV)-4 from the space station’s Harmony module. This will wrap up a month’s stay at the orbiting laboratory, during which time more than 3.5 tons of supplies and spare parts were unloaded from the vehicle onto the space station. The departure frees up a space station docking port for the arrival of Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Cygnus cargo vehicle in late September.

NASA TV coverage will begin at 11 a.m. EDT with an expanded edition of “Space Station Live,” featuring activities surrounding the HTV-4 departure.

HTV-4 launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan on a Japanese H-IIB rocket Aug. 3. It arrived at the space station Aug. 9 and was installed on Harmony several hours after being grappled by Nyberg. 

For information on the International Space Station, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/station

For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Editor’s note: You can watch a large HD stream of the event on SpaceRef at http://spaceref.com/live/live-nasa-tv.html