The two spacecraft will remain docked for a period of about six days, after which Shenzhou-9 will undock.

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Several hundred pounds of supplies would be brought aboard, and after about a week, the Dragon would undock and return to Earth.

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Discovery, meanwhile, is scheduled to undock from Alpha on August 20 and land at Kennedy Space Center on August 22 at 12:48 p.m.

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Later this week, the astronauts will undock and redock the Shenzhou 9 from the space module, to verify their their systems are still functional.

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It is scheduled to stay at the ISS until August, after which it will undock and take station rubbish into a controlled burn-up over the Pacific Ocean.

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Then on Monday, crew members Hadfield, Marshburn and Roman Romanenko will undock their Russian Soyuz from the station and head back to Earth for a planned 10:31pm EDT landing in Kazakhstan.

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