SpaceX Delays NG-20 Launch By One Day

The launch of Northrup-Grumman’s Cygnus NG-20 has been delayed until Tuesday, January 30th at 12:07 PM EST.

William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of Build and Flight Reliability, said in a news conference on January 26th that, “it’s taken a lot of modifications on our part to get this hardware ready to go fly, and we want to make sure it goes right. We think it is good to delay a little bit and make sure we get all this activity right and we’re ready to get this cargo inserted into Cygnus and get ready to fly on Tuesday.”

The launch is scheduled for 12:07 PM EST with an instantaneous window from Cape Canaveral’s SLC-40. Approximately eight minutes after launching, the booster used for this mission will return to the Cape to land at LZ-1, SpaceX’s landing facility located about 5.6 miles to the south of the launch pad. 

Northrup-Grumman’s Cygnus CRS-2 will be the 20th resupply mission carried out as part of NG’s Commercial Resupply contract with NASA and will ferry supplies for the station’s crew, equipment, as well as new scientific experiments to the orbiting outpost.

SpaceX Modifications To Launch Cygnus

“We’re completing some modifications to the Launchpad to to get it ready to to go fly. We still have quite a bit of work in front of us,” Gerstenmaier said on Friday.

After having flown on Atlas V and their Antares booster, Northrup Grumman is launching on a SpaceX rocket for the first time, and to launch the voluminous Cygnus spacecraft, SpaceX has been required to make some changes to Falcon 9 fairings and launch equipment. In order to be sure that those changes were completed correctly, SpaceX delayed the launch by at least one day.

“We’re going to do a late-load activity into the Cygnus vehicle [so] we modified the fairing that’s the covering that goes on the outside of the Falcon rocket to include a 5-foot by 4-foot wide door. It essentially allows us to enter into the fairing area and put late-load car Cargo in,” Gerstenmaier said.

He then continued, “Some of [the payload’s components] are going to be delivered in this late-load cargo that goes through this new hatch we put in place. It’s it’s more than just a hatch, actually, we have an environmentally controlled area so we don’t bring any kind of debris or contamination in.”

“The front part of Cygnus is very sensitive as it bursts to station,” Gerstenmaier said. “There’s some rings that seal it to [the] space station. We cannot contaminate those rings, we have to make sure that the cargo is delivered safely through this door into the fairing and then carefully placed inside Cygnus for launch, so that’s a pretty intense activity this will be the first time we’ve done that.”

SpaceX has added clean-room facilities to accommodate those requirements, in addition to the fairing modifications that Gerstenmaier mentions above. That said, it is understandable why the company wants to ensure that it completes every item remaining on its checklist for releasing those modifications to an actual flight without the pressure of a looming launch deadline.

“It’s taken a lot of modifications on our part to get this hardware ready to go fly we want to make sure it’s right, so we think it’s it’s good to delay a little bit and make sure that we get all this activity right, and we’re ready to get this cargo safely inserted into Cygnus and get it ready to fly on Tuesday,” Gerstenmaier concluded.

Northrup-Grumman’s Booster Issues

Initially, the Commercial Resupply Services contract that NG is fulfilling was by Orbital Sciences, then Orbital-ATK after a merger, and finally Northrup Grumman when it acquired Orbital-ATK. With the CRS contract, Northrup Grumman inherited the Antares series of boosters, with the final flight of Antares being on August 1, 2023.

After retiring the Antares series due to supply issues — the first stage was manufactured by Ukrainian companies Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, and Russian firm NPO Energomash manufactured the booster’s two RD-181 engines — Northrop announced that it would develop a new first stage and engines for the Antares launch vehicle in a collaboration with Cedar Park, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace. The new rocket has been dubbed Antares-330 and is now expected to first fly in 2025.

The Tuesday launch will be the first of three contracted with SpaceX to launch Cygnus.

Note: This article was originally published by the author on Talk of Titusville