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<\/p>\nRoughly 37 hours after launching from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) in Virginia, Northrop Grumman\u2019s NG-11 Cygnus spacecraft has arrived at the International Space Station with 7,600 lbs (3,442 kg) of supplies.<\/p>\n
Grappled by Station astronauts Anne McClain (NASA) and David Saint-Jacques (CSA) using the Canadarm2, the S.S. Roger Chaffee will now be berthed to the Station\u2019s Unity (Node-1) Nadir port.<\/p>\n
Cygnus will remain at the Station until July, after which it will undertake a planned multi-month free flight test.\n<\/p>\n
\nCygnus in orbit; Antares deploys satellites:<\/b><\/p>\n
The NG-11 Cygnus mission continues a busy resupply month for the Station and its 6 person crew, marking the second major resupply flight to arrive this month with one more to follow.<\/p>\n
Previously, the Progress MS-11 Russian resupply craft launched to and arrived at the International Space Station on 4 April.<\/p>\n
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The might of Antares captured from remote camera of Brady Kenniston at the NG-11 launch. (Credit: Brady Kenniston for NSF\/L2)<\/p>\n
Cygnus will soon be joined on orbit next week when SpaceX\u2019s CRS-17 cargo Dragon launches on NET (No Earlier Than) 26 April at 05:55 EDT (0955 UTC).<\/p>\n
For the NG-11 Cygnus, the craft\u2019s arrival at the Station followed a little less than 37 hours of orbital phasing that began with a flawless launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Virginia\u2019s Wallops Island on Wednesday atop NGIS\u2019 Antares 230 rocket.<\/p>\n
Astronomy (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n (A detailed NG-11 rendezvous burn, thruster firing, and approach plan is available here for download on L2.)<\/p>\n After lifting off the pad, the Antares rocket pitched southeast to take Cygnus on its multi-minute ride to orbit. <\/p>\n After orbit insertion and deployment, Cygnus successfully deployed its two power generating solar arrays and began a series of burns to raise its orbit from the initial 205 km injection orbit up to the roughly 409 km orbit of the International Space Station. <\/p>\n For Cygnus\u2019 ride to orbit, the Antares rocket\u2019s Castor 30XL second stage\u2019s mission did not end with the deployment of Cygnus but rather continued on with the deployment of 61 small satellites \u2013 including 60 ThinSats for the Virginia Commercial Space Authority and one NASA-sponsored 3U CubeSat called Student Aerothermal Spectrometer Satellite of Illinois and Indiana CubeSat (SASSI2).<\/p>\n The solid propellant Castor 30XL upper stage of Antares, seen here in processing for the NG-12 mission later in 2019. (Credit: Brady Kenniston)<\/p>\n The ThinSats and SASSI2 were deployed within the first few hours of the Castor 30XL\u2019s arrival on orbit and after Cygnus was a safe distance away.<\/p>\n Science delivery:<\/b><\/p>\n With Cygnus now successfully at the International Space Station, astronauts will, over the next few hours, connect the vehicle to the Common Berthing Mechanism on the nadir port on the Unity (Node-1) module.<\/p>\n From there, they\u2019ll take detailed photographic surveys of Cygnus to document its condition before opening the hatches between the two craft.<\/p>\n The first order of business will be to extract the time-sensitive scientific experiments that must be performed quickly \u2013 a first for Cygnus.<\/p>\n Afterward, the crew will remove the rest of the Space Station supplies from Cygnus.<\/p>\n In all, four of the five international Station partners have utilization\/science experiments being delivered aboard the S.S. Roger Chaffee. The only partner that has no experiments or equipment on Cygnus is Russia.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Screen-Shot-2019-04-18-at-20.28.08.png\")
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