Cygnus NG-17, previously known as Cygnus OA-17, was the seventeenth flight of the
Northrop Grumman
Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...
robotic resupply spacecraft
Unmanned spacecraft or uncrewed spacecraft are spacecraft without people on board, used for robotic spaceflight. Uncrewed spacecraft may have varying levels of autonomy from human input; they may be remote controlled, remote guided or even ...
International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ...
(ISS) under the
Commercial Resupply Services
Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) are a series of flights awarded by NASA for the delivery of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) on commercially operated spacecraft. The first CRS contracts were signed in 2008 and awarde ...
(CRS) contract with
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
. The mission launched on 19 February 2022. It was the sixth launch of Cygnus under the CRS-2 contract.
Orbital ATK
Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (NGIS) was a sector (business segment) of Northrop Grumman from 2018 through 2019. It was formed from Orbital ATK Inc. a company which resulted from the merger of Orbital Sciences Corporation and parts of Alli ...
’s space division (now part of ''Northrop Grumman Space Systems'') and NASA jointly developed a new space transportation system to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station (ISS). Under the
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services
Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) was a NASA program to coordinate the development of vehicles for the delivery of crew and cargo to the International Space Station by private companies. The program was announced on January 18, 200 ...
(COTS) program, Orbital ATK designed, acquired, built, and assembled these components:
Antares
Antares is the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpius. It has the Bayer designation α Scorpii, which is Latinised to Alpha Scorpii. Often referred to as "the heart of the scorpion", Antares is flanked by σ Scorpii and τ S ...
Thales Alenia Space
Thales Alenia Space () is a Franco-Italian aerospace manufacturer. A joint venture between the French technology corporation Thales Group (67%) and Italian defense conglomerate Leonardo (33%), the company is the largest satellite manufacture ...
and a Service Module based on the Orbital
GEOStar
''Geostari'' (Georgian: ჯეოსტარი) is the Georgian franchise of the Idol series, which airs on Rustavi 2. Georgia is the fifth former Soviet country to have acquired an ''Idol'' franchise after Armenia, Estonia, Kazakhstan, and Ru ...
satellite bus
A satellite bus (or spacecraft bus) is the main body and structural component of a satellite or spacecraft, in which the payload and all scientific instruments are held.
Bus-derived satellites are opposed to specially produced satellites. Bus-d ...
.
History
Cygnus NG-17 was the sixth Cygnus mission under the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract.
Production and integration of Cygnus spacecraft are performed in Dulles, Virginia. The Cygnus service module is mated with the pressurized cargo module at the launch site, and mission operations are conducted from control centers in
Dulles, Virginia
Dulles () is an unincorporated area in Loudoun County, Virginia, United States, and is part of the Washington metropolitan area. The headquarters of Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems and ODIN Technologies, as well as the former headquarters of ...
and
Houston
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
,
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
.
Spacecraft
This was the twelfth flight of the Enhanced-sized Cygnus PCM. Northrop Grumman named this spacecraft after
Piers Sellers
Piers John Sellers (11 April 1955 – 23 December 2016) was a British-American meteorologist, NASA astronaut and Director of the Earth Science Division at NASA/GSFC. He was a veteran of three Space Shuttle missions.
Sellers attended Cranbro ...
, in celebration of his role in assembling the International Space Station.
Manifest
Cygnus spacecraft is loaded with of research, hardware, and crew supplies.
* Crew supplies:
* Science investigations:
* Spacewalk equipment:
* Vehicle hardware:
* Computer resources:
ISS reboost
Aside from the orbital delivery, Cygnus performed the program's first operational reboost of the ISS. The space station's orbit needs to be changed from time to time as it naturally falls back in Earth's atmosphere. The ISS will change its attitude by about 90 degrees before executing the Cygnus reboost on 18 June 2022.
On 20 June 2022 at 15:20 UTC, Cygnus NG-17 gimbal engine was scheduled to fire for 5 minutes and 1 second but the firing was aborted after 5 seconds.
On Saturday, June 25, 2022 at 17:42 UTC, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus completed its first limited reboost of the International Space Station. Cygnus’ gimbaled delta velocity engine was used to adjust the space station’s orbit through a reboost of the altitude of the space station. The maneuver lasted 5 minutes, 1 second and raised the station’s altitude 1/10 of a mile at apogee and 5/10 of a mile at perigee.
Research
The new experiments that have arrived at the orbiting laboratory will inspire future scientists and explorers, and provide valuable insight for researchers.
NASA Glenn Research Center studies:
* TBD
See also
*
Uncrewed spaceflights to the International Space Station
Uncrewed spaceflights to the International Space Station (ISS) are made primarily to deliver cargo, however several Russian modules have also docked to the outpost following uncrewed launches. Resupply missions typically use the Russian Progress s ...