NASA confirmed that the Cygnus capsule, the company Orbital ATK, was successfully launched later in Florida on Tuesday for a new supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). After the end of the mission in May and once it undocked from the Station, Cygnus will be a new experience to study the effects of a fire sized weightless.
the Atlas V rocket two-story United Launch Alliance, carrying the unmanned capsule, was torn from its launch pad of the base of the US Air Force from Cape Canaveral in a dark night as planned 5 to 23 pm the opening of a 30-minute launch window, as live television images of NASA.
Fifth resupply mission
the orbiting of Cygnus occurred 21 minutes later, confirmed the control center. The vessel was then deploy its two solar antennas before starting his chase to reach the ISS on Saturday. Cygnus will be moored approximately 10 am 40 to the orbital outpost with the robotic arm of the Station led by two of the six crew members of the ISS.
s’ is the fifth supply mission to the ISS by Cygnus on behalf of NASA and the second from that of last December that marked the resumption of flights of spaceship Orbital ATK since the explosion of its Antares launcher shortly after takeoff in October 2014 from the space center in Wallops Island, on the coast of Virginia. Orbital has yet to make two more cargo missions to the ISS in 2016 for NASA under a contract of $ 1.9 billion with NASA.
“It’s like Christmas when a supply ship arrives “
the next launch will be in early summer aboard Antares from central Wallops. For his second flight, this improved version of Cygnus, with an increased capacity of 25%, will deliver 3.6 tons of cargo to the ISS, including food, water, clothing for the crew six astronauts as well as equipment and materials for dozens of scientific experiments.
“it’s like Christmas when a supply ship arrives at the station”, had commented before Dan launch Tani, an official of the mission in Orbital and a former astronaut of NASA who stayed in the ISS. Astronauts revel fun “to open a box of good things or something was expected” in particular.
moored to the ISS for two months
Cygnus carries such an instrument for the first time will determine from space the chemical composition of meteors entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The pressurized vessel also brings a new 3D printer and a demonstrator of a new adhesive technology inspired by microscopic hairs on the feet of geckos, small lizards that can walk clinging to the ceiling.
This technique could one day equip the hands and feet of robots that will move outside the spacecraft to perform inspections and repairs. Cygnus will remain docked to the ISS for two months. Once the astronauts will take charge of waste and other discarded equipment, the ship will be undocked from the Station and, once it is far enough away, engineers at NASA intentionally trigger a fire on board for evaluate the size of the flames spread, measure the heat and gas emissions in weightlessness.
another mission of cargo in April
This scale fire, unprecedented in a spacecraft in orbit, will provide valuable data considered for current and future safety of astronaut crews, said Gary Ruff, an aerospace engineer at Glenn research center (Ohio) NASA, a major contributor to that experience dubbed “Saffire 1″.
“NASA will be able to begin to develop better fire detection systems in spacecraft and new protection equipment for astronauts,” a-t- he says. A few days after this experience, Cygnus will plunge into the atmosphere and disintegrate over the Pacific Ocean.
Another cargo mission to the ISS is planned on April 8 with the Dragon capsule, the SpaceX company, to be launched from Cape Canaveral aboard its Falcon rocket 9. It will be the first flight of Dragon to the ISS since the explosion of the launcher 28 June 2015. This will however be the fourth launch for Falcon 9 since the accident. Falcon 9 has conducted three flights from 22 December 2015 to place in orbit several satellites successfully.
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