Rocket launching with cargo for International Space Station
Rocket launching with cargo for International Space Station
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
APRIL 17, 2019 / 1:32 PM / CBS NEWS
A Northrop Grumman Antares rocket stands poised for blastoff from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport - MARS - on Virginia's Eastern Shore. Perched atop the Antares is a Cygnus cargo ship loaded with 3.8 tons of supplies and equipment bound for the International Space Station.
NASA
After loading last-minute cargo and biological samples, including 40 mice, Northrop Grumman engineers readied an Antares rocket and Cygnus supply ship for launch from Virginia's Eastern Shore Wednesday on a two-day flight to the International Space Station, the second of three planned resupply runs in less than a month.
Liftoff from pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport – MARS – at NASA's Wallops Island, Virginia, test facility was targeted for 4:46 p.m. EDT, the moment Earth's rotation carries the pad into the plane of the station's orbit – a requirement for rendezvous missions.
If all goes well, the Antares 230 rocket, powered by two Russian RD-181 first stage engines and a Northrop Grumman solid-propellant upper stage, will release the Cygnus cargo ship into a preliminary orbit about nine minutes after liftoff. The spacecraft then will deploy its two solar wings and set off after its quarry.
The automated rendezvous is designed to bring the Cygnus to a point about 30 feet directly below the lab complex around 5:30 a.m. Friday morning. It then will hold position while astronaut Anne McClain, operating the station's robot arm, locks onto a grapple fixture.
From there, flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston will take over, remotely operating the arm to pull the supply ship in for berthing at the Earth-facing port of the central Unity module.
On board are 3.8 tons of equipment and supplies, including 2,065 pounds of crew food, clothing and other material, 3,459 pounds of research hardware, including the mouse habitat, 1,384 pounds of space station hardware and 140 pounds of spacewalk gear, computer equipment and other items.
In addition to the station-bound cargo, the second stage of the Antares also carried a small Cubesat and 63 even smaller satellites built by students representing more than 70 schools across nine states. The "ThinSats," each a little larger than a deck of cards, were equipped with relatively simple systems to measure aspects of the space environment before falling back into the atmosphere and burning up five to 10 days after release.
Data from the ThinSats, each one weighing about 10 ounces, will be relayed back to classrooms over the internet via radio links with Globalstar relay stations.
"If you can get these kids turned on, boy, you better step out of the road or they're going to run right over the top of you," said Bob Twiggs, professor of Astronautics and Space Science at Morehead State University and an enthusiastic leader of the drive to develop small, low-cost satellites for research and STEM initiatives.
"So doing something like this at a cost that you could get down to the elementary schools, I think is really great," he said.
Three slightly larger Cubesats will be deployed after the Cygnus departs the station in late July and another seven small satellites will be launched from the station through an airlock in the Japanese Kibo laboratory module.
The Antares-Cygnus flight comes just 13 days after launch of a Russian Progress supply ship from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. If all goes well, SpaceX will follow Northrop Grumman with launch of a Falcon 9 rocket April 26 to send a Dragon cargo ship to the station from Cape Canaveral.
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William Harwood
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2's flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia."
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