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WALLOPS ISLAND – A spacecraft carrying 40 mice, two flying robots and the dreams of hundreds of science students goes to the scheduled rendezvous with the International Space Station after a flawless launch from a state-owned regional spaceport, Wednesday afternoon.
The Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft is separated from the Antares rocket nine minutes after 4:46 pm. Launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, based at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility on this barrier island located along the east coast from Virginia. The spacecraft, named after American astronaut Roger Chaffee, is expected to dock with the space station orbiting Earth early Friday.
Before approaching the space station, Cygnus will deploy 63 miniature satellites, called ThinSats, that students from Virginia and other states have helped design for an inaugural experiment to transfer huge amounts of data from the outside atmosphere of Earth in state and country classrooms.
Hundreds of students, their teachers and their families gathered on Wallops Island to attend the launch. This was the eleventh and final space station replenishment mission in the first of two contracts between NASA and Northrop Grumman; all missions launched from Wallops except one. The first mission of a second contract is scheduled for this fall.
"I've been crying a bit, but I'm probably going to smile for days now," said Laura Akesson, a professor of physics and biomedical design at Steward School in Henrico County, who attended the launch of the Rocket with six high school students.
Steward and HE Godwin de Henrico High School are part of a group of schools that have worked for nearly a year under the direction of the College of William & Mary to develop their own ThinSats for its launch in the space. The satellites were originally scheduled for deployment last fall, but the project was delayed.
Most of the ThinSats carried aboard S.S. Roger Chaffee, including those from William & Mary's schools, represent standard rather than custom designs because of the rigorous three-phase timeline for their production.
"I think we can build a better version of our second ThinSat," said Jason Cantor, 14, of Glen Allen.
The trainees were caught unawares by the power of the Antares launch, flames firing from its base on the state's launch pad at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, and a roar that shook them for miles Swamps.
"It was like the whole world was focusing on that moment," said Jamie Biggs, 17, of Midlothian. "It was amazing."
"The shockwave hit and I felt it in my chest," said Mark Carnes, 17, of Richmond.
"It was so brilliant!" Said Matthew Cantor, 17, of Glen Allen.
For Logan Ransom, 18, of Mechanicsville, Antares' experience in tracking preparations and launching was a validation of the academic path he chose: aerospace engineering at the university from Tennessee to Knoxville.
"It's cool to see a real application of what I'm going to study at university," Ransom said.
William & Mary's team focused on collecting data – temperature, pressure, magnetic force – that could be converted into music.
"Just to listen to paradise is essentially what we would do," said Joshua Erlich, a physics professor at William & Mary, who advises high school students from the Richmond and Williamsburg area team.
The students had a different idea from that of the university, said Akesson. "They were doing sound, we were doing visual things with them."
Glen Allen's 16-year-old Jonah Costen said the experiment whetted her appetite for high school science.
"I would like to see if we can go even further," said Costen.
This is the idea of the ThinSat program, which the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority has helped fund for schools in the state, including nine in southwestern Virginia.
"It's an investment for the future," said Dale Nash, executive director of Virginia Space, which operates the regional spaceport.
Wise County District Court Clerk Jack Kennedy predicted the program would be an "awakening" for students "who will collect data from satellites in orbit on which they have fingers."
Kennedy, a former member of the House of Delegates and a board member of the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, traveled to the east coast with over 60 students, teachers and parents from southwest Virginia to attend at the launch of Wednesday.
Student-inspired satellites are not the only novelty of the Cygnus mission, which carries more than 200,000 books of research supplies and equipment to the six-person space station.
The mice – a first for the space station – will study the effects of the microgravity atmosphere on the immune response to tetanus vaccines. Their presence is possible thanks to an innovation that makes it possible to load additional material sensitive to the time 24 hours before the launch instead of several days.
The research could improve understanding of the body's immune response in weightless conditions, which could apply to people confined to beds or wheelchairs, California biologists Trisha Rettig and Nina Nishiyama said. during a briefing Tuesday on the cargo.
Cygnus will also carry two Astrobees, hovering robots that will help the space station astronauts by filming their work or even finding lost tools, much like the robotic maid of the cartoon show "The Jetsons" presented half a century ago.
"These are essentially the same processors as your smartphone," said Maria Bualat at NASA.
The spacecraft will also provide research material on the aging of astronaut arteries, a new way of analyzing blood and other human fluids, and specialized optical fiber fabrication, among other new and ongoing experiments at the station. Space.
This is the fifth launch of Antares here since the catastrophic explosion that destroyed an earlier version of the Antares rocket on October 28, 2014. The State, NASA and Northrop Grumman have rebuilt the launch pad of the state and baptized it with the launch of a new version of the rocket almost exactly two years after the blast.
The Cygnus spacecraft has also changed dramatically and can now carry more cargo and operate longer in space, which he will test with this mission after leaving the space station.
The largest and most flexible spacecraft announces the next generation of Cygnus as part of the space station's commercial replenishment contract scheduled to begin here this fall.
"It's almost the act of opening the second contract," Nash said.
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