Cygnus Cargo Spacecraft Reaches International Space Station

Worldwide Have a break Boundary marker Cross 37 gathering members actually captured the Orbital Sciences Cygnus prize spacecraft plus the station's robotic arm at 7:00 a.m. EDT. Support its clip, the spacecraft is being maneuvered by Luca Parmitano of the European Have a break Buff and Karen Nyberg of NASA for plant onto the Earth-facing port of the station's Serenity curriculum. Cygnus launched Sept. 18 aboard an Antares mount from NASA's Wallops Assemble Capability in Virginia. Orbital Sciences uploaded a software fix for a navigation data fissure that occurred at home its to hand Sept. 22. NASA managers opted to waver until after Wednesday's Soyuz name and docking to restore clip and berthing activities.

Cygnus was committed steadfastly similar to the space station by about 1,491 miles seeing that short managers and ground controllers weathered the software garden and studied Sunday's trimming to hand effort. Cygnus began a series of thruster burns towards the orbital laboratory Thursday night after station managers gave their definite approbation.

As Cygnus met its declare objectives and moved more willingly to the space station, Cross 37 Assemble Engineers Luca Parmitano and Karen Nyberg watched and worked in cycle plus Shoot Return to normal. Parmitano was in the cupola at the Canadarm2 controls monitoring its to hand. Nyberg was his venture up at the supplementary robotics central processing unit internal the Opulence laboratory.

The Cygnus issue resupply craft is captured by the Canadarm2 plus Luca Parmitano at the controls. Image Credit: NASA TV

After Cygnus met its definite declare outside of pointing a tracking laser at a reflector on the Kibo laboratory it moved to its clip itemize about 10 meters from the station. Cygnus turned off its thrusters, operated in free propose, and Parmitano maneuvered the Canadarm2 to fight and clip Cygnus.

Orbital Sciences Cygnus control room after the victorious prize craft clip. Credit: NASA TV

As soon as clip, Parmitano operated the Canadarm2 to move Cygnus and attach it to the Serenity node about four hours with. The hatches to Cygnus behest be opened MOnday afternoon after leak checks and lead relations.

Orbital Sciences is the trimming charisma to transport a issue prize craft to the space station. SpaceX was the first charisma to transport its own prize ship plus two victorious issue resupply missions and two declare missions under its beat.

Credit: NASA

Categories: aliens, space technology, spaceflight