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The private space company Orbital ATK launches its Antares rocket with a Cygnus spacecraft at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. He is heading to the International Space Station, where he will drop more than 3 tons of NASA cargo to the International Space Station. The Antares rocket should take off from the Pad-0A of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.
The supply vessel must dock on Thursday, May 24th. The laboratory robotic arm will capture the spaceship and fire it for docking. It will be anchored to the port facing the ground of the Unity central module. The astronauts will then unload the cargo and repack it with useless equipment and trash.
In addition to supplies such as clothing and food, the gear will contain scientific equipment for a number of scientific experiments and demonstrations. One equipment that the rocket will carry is the Cold Atom Laboratory. The laboratory will use magnetic fields and lasers to try to cool the atoms to one billionth of a degree above absolute zero. There will be another experiment to test a liquid separation technique and another to find out more about how concrete is installed without gravity.
If all goes well, the Cygnus will be disconnected and will leave the station in seven weeks. As he leaves, he will release six tiny CubeSats satellites. These satellites will be used for a wide variety of research, including the study of precipitation in the Earth's atmosphere and the search for the increasing amount of radio frequency interference around the Earth.
The mission is the ninth Orbital ATK flight for NASA. The last mission of the company to the space station took place last November. The company is expected to launch another mission this fall. Orbital ATK currently has a contract of 11 flights with NASA that is expected to cost about $ 262.6 million per flight. The company also has a resulting contract for at least six replenishment missions at an unspecified cost.
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