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Kurt Eberly has almost no hair and loses more. His job is to launch, twice a year, a metal cylinder containing several tons of supplies, at high speed to the International Space Station, 400 km above the Earth.
Eberly leads the Antares rocket program at Northrop Grumman, the US aerospace company that shares a valuable customer with SpaceX: NASA.
Saturday at four o'clock in the morning, on Wallops Island, Virginia, Eberly was in this NASA control room, dedicated to rocket launchers smaller than those taking off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Countdown, three, two, one. Then, at the exact moment, the rocket Antares, 42 meters high (42 meters), rose in the dark sky and burst into an infernal roar.
At the top of the rocket was a capsule called Cygnus, made in Italy and loaded with 3,350 kg of equipment, including meals, clothing for the next astronaut crew, technical equipment and about two dozen scientific experiments. .
After three and a half minutes of flight, the first leg – after having burned all its fuel – broke off and fell into the Atlantic Ocean.
The engine of the second stage took over. At T + 9 minutes, the rocket reached 212 km high, somewhere northeast of Puerto Rico, when the launch orchestra leader announced, in a bland monotone: "And we have a separation of the Cygnus payload. "
The spacecraft is separated at a speed of 4.7 miles (7.5 kilometers) per second.
On Monday, the spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station. He arrived at 07:31 (12:31 GMT) and marked the 10th Cygnus mission up to now.
– Explosion in 2014 –
"Each of those launches, you know, your heart is beating wildly and I have about three heart attacks each countdown," Eberly told AFP a few weeks earlier in the clean room where the Cygnus is ready to take off the launch pad.
"It's always very stressful to know how much energy is accumulated in this rocket and that everything must be released in the right way."
On Saturday, after the successful launch, he increased his estimate of heart distress.
"I think it's five, five heart attacks, I've lost even more hair, but now it's an incredible feeling of relief and happiness."
These unmanned cargo launches have become so commonplace that they are almost trivial. This year, the ISS will be replenished three times by a Russian spacecraft, Japanese ships once and American freighters five times, between SpaceX and Northrop Grumman.
But space remains a dangerous business.
The last reminder is the October 11th failure of a Soyuz rocket en route to the outpost in orbit, forcing both men on board to eject soon after launch. Nobody was hurt.
In 2014, the unmanned rocket carrying the third Cygnus mission exploded a few seconds after takeoff, and the cloud of smoke created was visible for miles.
It was "like a punch to the intestine," Eberly said.
It took two more years for another Antares to be launched.
Whether they carry passengers or cargo, rockets are traveling at extreme speeds, said Rick Mastracchio, a former NASA astronaut and senior director of operations for Northrop Grumman's Commercial Replenishment Program.
"You advance faster than a bullet in fact, you are probably traveling 10 times faster than a fastball, five miles a second once you reach orbit," he said. he declares.
"There are extreme temperatures ranging from cryogenic temperature to thousands of degrees Fahrenheit at which materials and machinery must work," he added.
"It may sound like a routine, but it's not a very simple thing to do – spaceflight is difficult."
It takes six months and 40 people to assemble an Antares rocket. Each Cygnus mission costs NASA about $ 263 million on average.
– Garbage removal –
Cargo ships remain at the space station between one and six months. The emptying and filling is left to the crew of astronauts and cosmonauts, responsible for everything from conducting scientific experiments to cleaning and basic maintenance aboard the outpost in orbit.
"The best day in orbit is the arrival of the Cygnus.But it's also a great day when the Cygnus goes away, why?" Because it removes garbage, "he said. Mastracchio.
"As a member of the crew, you live with this trash for months and months, when the Cygnus removes the trash, the space station is a better place."
Few people on Earth probably think of such details when they think about a rocket launch.
Saturday, at the launch, featured a family of Bolivian immigrants. They drove hours from North Carolina to attend the launch.
"We come from a very poor country, we can never see these kinds of events, I am so happy to be here," said mother Marlene Ancalli.
"It's my dream," she says as the rocket disappears into the sky.
ico / ksh / mdo
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The cargo Cygnus launches to the ISS
Wallops Flight Facility, United States of America (AFP) Nov 17, 2018
An unmanned freighter Cygnus took off on Saturday for the International Space Station. This was the second 24-hour supply mission to deliver food and supplies to astronauts living in outer space.
An Antares rocket piloted by Northrop Grumman illuminated the night sky at 4:01 am (01:01 GMT) as it propelled the machine loaded with 3,400 kilograms of material into space.
On Friday, a Russian rocket Soyuz launched its first cargo mission in the space station from a rocket … read more
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