Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus resupply spacecraft. Credit: NASA
At 11: 01 a.m. EST on November 20, 2021, flight controllers on the ground sent out commands to launch the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft from the Canadarm2 robotic arm after earlier detaching Cygnus from the Earth- dealing with port of the Unity module. At the time of release, the station was flying about 260 miles over the South Pacific Ocean.
The Cygnus spacecraft effectively left the International Space Station more than 3 months after reaching the spaceport station to provide about 8,000 pounds of clinical examinations and products to the orbiting lab.
The Northrop Grumman Cygnus area truck remains in the grip of the Canadarm2 robotic arm minutes prior to its release above the South PacificOcean Credit: NASA TELEVISION
After departure, the Kentucky Re-Entry Probe Experiment (KREPE) stowed inside Cygnus will take measurements to show a thermal security system for spacecraft and their contents throughout re-entry in Earth’s environment, which can be challenging to reproduce in ground simulations.
Cygnus will deorbit on Wednesday,Dec 15, following a deorbit engine shooting to establish a harmful re-entry in which the spacecraft, filled with waste the spaceport station team crammed in the spacecraft, will burn up in Earth’s environment.
Cygnus reached the spaceport station on August 12, following a launch 2 days prior on Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket from NASA‘s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island,Virginia It was the business’s 16 th business resupply services objective to the spaceport station for NASA. Northrop Grumman called the spacecraft after NASA astronaut Ellison Onizuka, the very first Asian American astronaut.
