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On September 3rd, NASA and SpaceX successfully completed a reboost maneuver of the International Space Station (ISS) using a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft as part of NASA’s 33rd commercial resupply services mission (CRS-33). The operation demonstrated Dragon’s new capability to adjust the ISS’s altitude, supporting the station’s orbital maintenance.

Dragon spacecraft, launched on August 24, 2025, from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, carried over 5,000 pounds of scientific experiments, supplies, and hardware.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft successfully performed a reboost maneuver on September 3, gently pushing the International Space Station to a higher orbit to maintain its position in space.

It docked autonomously to the ISS’s Harmony module on August 25, 2025, at 7:05 a.m. EDT. The reboost maneuver, conducted on September 3, utilized two Draco thrusters located in the spacecraft’s unpressurized trunk, powered by an independent propellant system with hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide. The burn lasted five minutes and three seconds, raising the ISS’s orbit by approximately one mile at perigee, resulting in an orbit of 260.9 by 256.3 miles above Earth.

NASA stated that the new boost kit in Dragon will help sustain the ISS’s altitude through a series of longer burns planned periodically throughout the Autumn of 2025. The ISS, orbiting approximately 250 miles above Earth, requires periodic reboosts to counteract atmospheric drag that causes gradual altitude loss.

Historically, Russia’s Progress spacecraft and, more recently, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft have performed these maneuvers. This reboost builds on a prior demonstration during NASA’s CRS-31 mission on November 8, 2024, when Dragon adjusted the ISS’s orbit by 7/100 of a mile at apogee and 7/10 of a mile at perigee during a 12.5-minute burn.

The data collected from the September 3 reboost will inform the development of a U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, which SpaceX is contracted to build for NASA to guide the ISS to a controlled reentry over the Pacific Ocean after its planned retirement in 2030 or 2031. The CRS-33 Dragon is scheduled to remain docked at the ISS until December 2025 or early January 2026, when it will return to Earth with research and cargo, splashing down off the coast of California.

As the ISS approaches its planned retirement, NASA and SpaceX are collaborating on the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon and developing Starship for crewed Mars missions targeted for the 2030s, advancing deep space exploration beyond Earth’s orbit.

Author’s note: Thanks for reading Cosmic Chronicles. Write your thoughts in the comment section below. If you have story suggestions or feedback, Direct Message me on social media 𝕏: Evelyn Janeidy Arevalo @JaneidyEve. Read the most recent stories featured below. Thank You.