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WASHINGTON – The next Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo mission to the International Space Station will demonstrate two new capabilities, one before launch and one after the Space Shuttle departs.
The Cygnus Space Shuttle, piloting a mission called NG-11, is due to launch at 16:46. East of April 17 on an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops Island, Virginia. At a press conference preceding the launch on April 16, officials reported no problem preparing the launch and excellent weather conditions, with a 95% probability of acceptable conditions at the airport. scheduled takeoff time.
The Cygnus carries more than 3,400 kilograms of cargo on this mission to the station. Of this total, 1,569 kilograms are destined for various scientific investigations, including 936 kg of crew. The rest is divided between vehicle equipment, miscellaneous equipment and a satellite deployer for NanoRacks.
For the first time, some of this cargo will be loaded on the Cygnus 24 hours before launch. The NG-11 mission is the first to demonstrate "late" loading capacity after deployment of the vehicle on the launch pad. At that time, six cargo bags will be loaded onto the Cygnus, said Andrew Zarechnak, head of Cygnus vehicles at Northrop Grumman, during a pre-launch scientific briefing.
"This allows us to do more science on this vehicle and allow more types of science to arrive at the station," he said. This includes a research experiment on rodents featuring 40 mice, the first time that such an experiment flew on the Swan. Similar experiences in the past have had to fly on the SpaceX Dragon, which already has the ability to load a cargo into the vehicle a day after launch.
This late loading uses a new "pop-top" payload fairing for the Antares, whose top can be removed to allow access to the Cygnus. A mobile payload processing facility is set up around the fairing while the rocket is horizontal at the platform so that crews can access the Cygnus to load this cargo.
The Cygnus must be moored to the ISS by the robotic arm of the station on April 19 and remain at the station for about 90 days. After being released, it will go into a higher orbit to deploy satellites.
During previous missions, Cygnus was desorbed a few weeks after leaving the station, but Northrop Grumman plans to keep Cygnus in orbit for months to test its ability to serve as a free flight search platform. .
"We are going to begin a long-term assignment for Cygnus, in which we will demonstrate its ability to fly long periods in space, where it will be able to constitute an excellent test bench for scientific experiments," he said. Frank DeMauro, Vice President. President and General Manager, Space Systems, Northrop Grumman.
To allow this extended mission, the Cygnus now has a control moment gyro to control the behavior of the spacecraft, which avoids the need for thrusters. This saves fuel that can instead be used to maintain its orbit and perform other maneuvers, extending the life of the spacecraft in orbit.
DeMauro said the company hoped to demonstrate that the Cygnus, as a free flight spacecraft, could be a platform for scientific research and technology demonstrations. "We want to demonstrate the truly virgin microgravity environment that Cygnus will provide," he said. This could include, in future missions, moving away from the ISS to conduct experiments for a while before returning so that the experiments can be retrieved.
The company has not set a precise timetable for this extended mission. DeMauro said the company wanted to keep the Nyg-11 Cygnus in orbit until at least the end of the NG-12 Cygnus launch in the fall. This would allow Northrop Grumman to demonstrate its ability to simultaneously operate two Cygnus satellites from the same control center.
"We think a minimum mission period is six to seven months," he said. "Once we reach that goal, if we have achieved all the other goals, we will come together and determine how long we may want to continue driving the vehicle."
The NG-11 Cygnus mission is the first of two commercial cargo spacecraft to visit the ISS this month. SpaceX is expected to launch its latest Dragon freighter spacecraft at the station on April 26 from Florida. Joel Montalbano, deputy director of NASA's ISS program, explained that this schedule was consecutive as the missions were ready to fly.
"Are we planning missions at a week's interval?" In general, we do not do it, "he said. "Our plan is to fly when customers are ready."
This mission is also the last of the initial Commercial Replenishment Services (CRS) contract awarded to Orbital Sciences Corporation in 2008. Mission NG-12 will be the first of at least six missions for the CRS-2 suite . contract awarded in 2016.
"When I think back to when we started for the first time, it's been so long since we're considering what would be our last mission," DeMauro said. "But here we are."
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