A Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship left the International Space Station on Wednesday after delivering more than 7,800 pounds of equipment and experiments, on its way to an extensive mission with payloads to study fire behavior in microgravity and test a next-generation radio system.
The consumable cargo ship was released from the space station’s Canadian robot arm at 10:11 AM EST (1511 GMT) on Wednesday, ending a three-month stay in the research complex. Ground controllers ordered the robotic arm to release the Cygnus spacecraft, while astronaut Kate Rubins watched the departure of the cargo on board the station as the vehicles sailed more than 200 kilometers across the Pacific Ocean.
Thrusters fired to launch the Cygnus spacecraft on a safe orbit away from the space station, which would set the scene for an extended 20-day mission.
“I can confirm that it was a beautiful room,” Rubins sent from the space station. ‘I just want to say that it was a pleasure to get this Cygnus vehicle aboard the International Space Station. Congratulations to all of NASA and the Northrop Grumman teams. ”
The Cygnus mission is completing Northrop Grumman’s 14th space mission training mission since 2013. The NG-14 mission began on October 2 with a launch aboard an Antares booster from Wallops Island, Virginia. The Cygnus spaceship arrived at the station on 5 October.
Northrop Grumman named the Cygnus offer ship the “SS Kalpana Chawla” in honor of the first woman of Indian descent to fly into space. Chawla flew on two spacecraft missions and she died in 2003 with her six crew members on the Columbia spacecraft.
The station’s robotic arm placed the SS Kalpana Chawla in the laboratory’s Unity module, and astronauts began unpacking the tons of equipment.
The NG-14 mission previously delivered four tons of supplies and experiments to the research lab, including a $ 23 million titanium toilet that is more woman-friendly than the station’s other commode. The mission also put together a high-definition virtual reality camera planned to be used on a future space stack, fresh food, biomedical experiments and a plant study to test how radishes grow in space.
The Cygnus spacecraft’s pressure vessel contains NASA’s fifth Saffire fire safety experiment. The payload within Cygnus builds on Sapphire experiments flown on previous Cygnus missions and, according to NASA, will monitor how fires grow in a range of pressures and oxygen concentrations expected in future exploration spacecraft.
“We look forward to following her autonomous flight and the Saffire experiment, and thank you for bringing an incredible amount of science and supplies to the space station,” Rubins said Wednesday after the Cygnus spacecraft left the station.
The Saffire experiment, developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, was housed in a stand-alone module inside the Cygnus spacecraft. It will also show fire detection, monitoring of combustion products and cleaning up after the fire, NASA said.
“Data obtained from Saffire-V should be used to validate spacecraft response modeling scenarios,” NASA said on its website. “Saffire-V increases our confidence in fire safety equipment and strategies for future spacecraft.”
A Northrop Grumman technology experiment called SharkSat has also been mounted on the SS Kalpana Chawla. According to a NASA fact sheet, SharkSat will remain connected to the Cygnus spacecraft to demonstrate a Ka-band software-defined radio system, which according to NASA has applications in 5G telecommunications, satellite communications, radar and autonomous and cognitive systems.
The Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to shoot thrusters for a brake maneuver to fall out of orbit and re-enter the atmosphere. January 26. The cargo ship, also loaded with a few tons of debris from the space station, was designed to burn up during entry over a sparsely traded section of the Pacific Ocean.
Northrop Grumman’s spacecraft Cygnus shares space equipment with the SpaceX DragonX capsule, the Russian Progress cargo ship and Japanese cargo missions.
NASA contracted with SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, now part of Northrop Grumman, in 2008 to fly the supply missions to the space station after the spacecraft’s exit. Northrop Grumman has flown 14 of these missions and has five more Cygnus cargo deliveries on contract until 2023.
Northrop Grumman’s next space station cargo mission, NG-15, will be launched on February 20 from Wallops Island, Virginia.
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