The return of Crew4 with AstroSamantha has been postponed due to bad weather

The departure of the 

with astronaut

and Americans Bob Hines, Kjell Lindgren and Jessica Watkins on board, scheduled for tonight, at 1:05 am Italian has been postponed due to bad weather. 

The US agency said

owned by the private company SpaceX,

.    

"Mission teams continue to monitor a cold front that is passing over Florida, with the potential to bring strong winds and rain near splashdown zones off the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts," said the space agency on the mission blog.    

NASA and SpaceX now aim to ensure that the

spacecraft begins to disengage from the ISS no earlier than 14:05 GMT today (16.05 Italian).

At that point, the return journey to Earth will begin and complete a scientific mission of nearly six months in orbit.

So if all goes as planned, the Freedom spacecraft will fall into the Atlantic at 21:43 GMT today Thursday 13 October (23.43 Italian time), NASA said. 

The Crew-4 mission arrived on the ISS on April 27 to begin a six-month science mission,

and last week the next one, Crew-5, arrived at the space lab.  

Crew-4 conducted experiments to study the aging-like changes that microgravity causes in human immune cells and how to reverse them.

It also pioneered an alternative to concrete made of material found in dust from the Moon and Mars, which could be used to build future space bases and save on long-range missions.    

In a press conference on Tuesday from the ISS, AstroSamantha hinted at research to improve food in space, while American Hines said the Northern Lights will likely be what he will remember most of what he saw through the ISS portholes. 

Last week they welcomed Crew-5

, the fifth manned mission jointly carried out by billionaire Elon Musk's NASA and SpaceX as part of the space agency's Commercial Crew Program, in which Boeing also participates.

The four crew members arrived at the ISS aboard the Dragon Endurance last Thursday, approximately 30 hours after taking off with a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. 

The six-month

mission is made up of two NASA astronauts, mission commander Nicole Aunapu Mann and pilot Josh Cassada, as well as Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) and Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos.