NASA announced that Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft is set to launch on a heavily-modified SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Monday. This will be Northrop Grumman’s 20th resupply services mission to the International Space Station.
The space agency and the private companies plan to launch the mission no earlier than 10.37 PM IST on Tuesday, January 30, and the live coverage of the launch will begin streaming at 10.20 PM IST. You can watch it on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube and the space agency’s website. You can also watch it through the link below.
The Cygnus spacecraft will carry more than 3,500 kilograms of supplies when it launches from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Statipon in Florida. It is set to arrive at the space station on February 1 when NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli will capture Cygnus using the station’s robotic arm.
William Gerstenmaier, vice president of Build and Flight Reliability at SpaceX, said the Falcon 9’s payload fairing — the shell that surrounds and protects the spacecraft during ascent while atop the rocket — had to be modified to add a hatch measuring 1.5 metres by 1.5 metres, according to Space.com. This gives crews the ability to add “late-load” cargo before launch, like ice cream for astronauts on the space station.
The complication brought about by the addition of the hatch may have contributed to delay of the launch by one day. NASA and the two companies were initially planning to launch on January 29. This is because that area inside the hatch must be environmentally controlled; any contamination on Cygnus’s docking hardware could affect how well it docks with the space station.
