{"id":18081,"date":"2019-04-17T18:58:26","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T10:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/northrop-grummans-antares-rocket-sends-cygnus-cargo-ship-to-the-space-station\/"},"modified":"2019-04-17T18:58:26","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T10:58:26","slug":"northrop-grummans-antares-rocket-sends-cygnus-cargo-ship-to-the-space-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/northrop-grummans-antares-rocket-sends-cygnus-cargo-ship-to-the-space-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Northrop Grumman\u2019s Antares rocket sends Cygnus cargo ship to the space station"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Antares
Northrop Grumman\u2019s Antares rocket lifts off from NASA\u2019s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, sending a robotic Cygnus cargo capsule into orbit. (NASA Photo \/ Bill Ingalls)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Almost four tons of supplies, hardware and science payloads are heading to the International Space Station after today\u2019s launch of a robotic Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft, dubbed the SS Roger Chaffee in honor of one of the astronauts killed in the 1967 Apollo 1 launch-pad fire, was sent into orbit from NASA\u2019s Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast at 4:46 p.m. ET (1:46 p.m. PT) atop Northrop Grumman\u2019s Antares rocket. The afternoon launch could be seen from a wide area of the East Coast\u2019s mid-Atlantic region.<\/p>\n

Cygnus\u2019 7,600-pound shipment includes experiments aimed at manufacturing high-quality optical fiber in zero-gravity, as well as nanoparticles that could someday be used for drug delivery. A host of nanosatellites are on board and due for deployment either from the space station or from the cylindrical Cygnus craft itself.<\/p>\n

Another piece of hardware aboard the Cygnus, known as the Robotic External Leak Locator or RELL, will serve as a mechanical \u201csniffer\u201d to detect external ammonia leaks from the station\u2019s cooling system.<\/p>\n

This is the 11th Cygnus mission flown under the terms of a cargo resupply contract with NASA, but the first to make use of a procedure for loading last-minute cargo. Among the late payloads was a troop of mice that will be used in a study of their immune response to a tetanus vaccine under zero-G conditions.<\/p>\n

Astronauts will use the station\u2019s Canadian-built robotic arm to haul in the Cygnus for its berthing early Friday. It\u2019ll spend a couple of months hooked up to the station, and will then be set loose for a first-of-its-kind, free-flying orbital mission that could last into the fall. At the end of its mission, the robotic craft will descend to a fiery end during atmospheric re-entry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Northrop Grumman\u2019s Antares rocket lifts off from NASA\u2019s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, sending a robotic Cygnus cargo capsule into orbit. (NASA Photo \/ Bill Ingalls) Almost four tons of supplies, hardware and science payloads are heading to the International Space Station after today\u2019s launch of a robotic Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo ship. The spacecraft, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1871,639,717],"class_list":["post-18081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-antares","tag-cygnus","tag-international-space-station"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18081"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}