Photo: Chris Leymarie, Florida Media Now
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Jan. 30, 2024 SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying the Northrup Grumman NG-20 mission toward ISS this afternoon. The launch was at 12:07 PM EST from the company’s launch pad at SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Once it had completed its part of the mission, Booster 1077 completed its tenth flight when it safely touched down at Landing Zone 1, about 5.6 miles to the south of where it launched a little more than eight minutes earlier.
New Capabilities For SpaceX
Today’s launch was the first of three that Northrup Grumman has contracted with SpaceX and is the twentieth ISS resupply mission that the company has flown. According to NASA, the Cygnus cargo spacecraft carries 3,017 pounds of experiments, 2,493 pounds of hardware, 2,490 pounds of crew supplies, 149 pounds of computer resources, and 35 pounds of spacewalk equipment.
Some of that cargo was loaded in the past 24 hours — foodstuffs (ice cream for the astronauts is rumored to be that portion of the payload), as well as some of the materials for science experiments, required a “late-load,” which is a new capability for SpaceX that necessitated a one-delay from the initially planned launch date of January 29.
“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,” William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president of Build and Flight Reliability, said in a news conference on January 26th.
Cygnus is expected to arrive at the International Space Station, where it will be docked to the orbiting facility’s Unity module by astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli.
Arrival At Space Station Will Be On Thursday
Now in orbit, the Cygnus cargo spacecraft will arrive at the International astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli will grapple it using ISS’s Canadarm 2 robotic arm, and the crew will then dock Cygnus to the Unity module. Following some normal checkouts, astronauts will later open the hatch to Cygnus and begin to unload the cargo within the spacecraft.
The Cygus spacecraft is expected to stay at the International Space Station for up to six months. The spacecraft may perform additional services, such as reboosting the station’s orbit to counteract atmospheric drag. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus provides the only U.S. spacecraft reboost capability for the International Space Station.
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