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Northrop Grumman packed a last-minute cargo into a Cygnus commercial supply ship on a launch pad in Virginia on Monday, putting the finishing touches on a spacecraft due to take off on Tuesday atop an Antares rocket on a mission to the Space Station. international.
The automated freighter, named the “SS Ellison Onizuka” after one of the astronauts who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger crash, is loaded with 8,210 pounds (3,723 kilograms) of supplies and experiments.
Supply ship Cygnus is scheduled to take off from pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Va., At 5:56:05 p.m. EDT (2156:05 GMT) on Tuesday, opening a launch window of five. minutes send the cargo mission in pursuit of the space station.
A 139-foot-tall (42.5-meter) Antares rocket will propel the Cygnus spacecraft into orbit. The two-stage rocket rolled out of Northrop Grumman’s horizontal integration facility on Friday for the mile-long trip to pad 0A.
Ground crews lifted the rocket vertically onto the launch pad for checks over the weekend, then lowered the Antares horizontally again to begin the process of loading the time-sensitive cargo into the Cygnus spacecraft. .
Once a mobile cleanroom was set up, technicians removed the “pop top” nose cone from the Antares rocket and opened the Cygnus hatch. The final cargo items to load into the Cygnus spacecraft included biological experiments and fresh food for the space station’s seven-person crew.
Early Tuesday, the late loading of cargo is expected to be completed, allowing crews to close the Cygnus hatch and reinstall the top of the rocket payload fairing. The rocket is expected to be lifted vertically again around 5:00 a.m. EDT (09:00 GMT) on Tuesday.
The five-hour countdown will begin shortly before 1:00 p.m. EDT (5:00 p.m. GMT), beginning with powering up the Antares flight computer and testing the rocket’s ranging transmitters and navigation system. The loading of the kerosene and liquid oxygen propellants into the Antares first stage will begin approximately one and a half hours before takeoff.
There is an 80% chance of good weather Tuesday for the launch of the Antares rocket from the Virginia Eastern Shore.
The Northrop Grumman refueling mission, named NG-16, will be the 16th delivery of cargo to the space station by a Cygnus supply ship since 2013. It will be the 15th launch of an Antares rocket, which was unsuccessful in its 14 previous missions. .
The two Russian-made RD-181 main engines of the first stage will come to life 3.7 seconds before take-off. Once the engines have reached full power, the retaining bolts loosen to allow the Antares to begin its ascent into space.
The RD-181 engines will produce approximately 864,000 pounds of thrust to steer the rocket on a trajectory southeast of Wallops.
At approximately T + plus 3 minutes and 24 seconds, the Antares will discard its liquid fuel first stage, followed shortly thereafter by the separation of the rocket payload fairing and the inter-stage adapter. A solid-fuel Castor 30XL upper stage will ignite at about T + plus 4 minutes, 7 seconds, for nearly three minutes to inject the Cygnus supply ship into a preliminary orbit in pursuit of the space station. The Cygnus freighter is expected to deploy from the second Antares stage at approximately T + plus 8 minutes and 52 seconds.
The Cygnus will deploy its two fan-shaped solar panels within hours of take-off, allowing the spacecraft to begin charging the batteries for the 1.5-day trip to the space station. Astronaut Megan McArthur aboard the research complex will use the Canadian-built robotic arm to capture the commercial supply ship around 6:10 a.m. EDT (10:10 GMT) Thursday, assuming an on-time launch Tuesday.
NASA has multi-billion dollar contracts with Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada Corp. to transport cargo to and from the space station. Northrop Grumman’s two replenishment contracts cover 19 operational freight missions through 2023.
The cargo launch aboard the Cygnus spacecraft includes a technology demonstration to see how future space explorers could 3D print materials from lunar soil.
The 3D printing demonstration, developed by Redwire, will use a “lunar regolith simulant” with physical properties and chemical composition similar to those of the moon’s soil, said Howie Schulman, project manager for the Redwire Regolith Print mission .
The simulant is a fine gray powder, which will be combined with a thermoplastic binder to create the raw material for the 3D printing experience.
The experiment, developed in partnership with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, will use Redwire’s commercial additive manufacturing facility on the space station. Redwire says it’s the first time that a material designed to mimic lunar soil has been used for 3D printing in space.
The hardware launch on the NG-16 mission for 3D printing demonstration includes three custom-designed printheads and three print bed surfaces, according to Redwire.
The material samples printed during the technical demonstration will be returned to Earth for analysis.
NASA and commercial companies are interested in 3D printing technology that could help make components and infrastructure on the moon’s surface. Future lunar explorers could make their own gear instead of bringing materials from Earth or relying on expensive freight shipments.
Mission NG-16 will also provide spare parts for the space station’s toilet, a storage rack for the lab airlock, and cooling fans for the station’s life support system.
The Cygnus spacecraft is also expected to deliver a “modification kit” to configure the space station’s solar power truss for the arrival of the next pair of new solar panels to be deployed in late 2022. The first two new solar panels have been completed. delivered to the station. in June with a SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule, starting an upgrade that will expand the lab’s power generation capacity for another decade of operations.
Astronauts will install the “modification kit” on the station’s massive power beam before the next two deployed solar panels arrive.
Other payloads slated for launch on Tuesday include a biomedical research investigation into microgravity muscle loss and an experiment to test a more efficient thermal control system that could be used to dissipate heat on future spacecraft.
The Cygnus spacecraft is expected to stay docked at the space station for about three months.
After leaving the research complex in November, the freighter Cygnus will head for a destructive reentry over the South Pacific Ocean, disposing of several tons of garbage packed inside its compartment pressurized by space station astronauts. .
One of the last experiences of the mission will be a heat shield technology test using three small capsules stowed inside the Cygnus spacecraft.
When the Cygnus breaks during re-entry, the capsules dive deeper into the atmosphere protected by heat shields made of different types of materials.
Led by engineers at the University of Kentucky, the experiment will collect data from sensors built into the heat shield of each capsule. The measurements will be transmitted to the scientific team via the Iridium satellite network.
The developers of the re-entry experiment say the data will help validate the computer models used in the design of spacecraft.
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Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @ StephenClark1.
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