NG-17, previously known as OA-17, was the seventeenth flight of the

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and Arms industry, defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest Arms industry ...

robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its sixteenth flight to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

(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 phase of CRS contracts (CRS-1) were sign ...

(CRS) contract with

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

. The mission launched on 19 February 2022 at 17:40:03UTC. It was the sixth launch of Cygnus under the CRS-2 contract.

Orbital ATK Orbital ATK Inc. was an American aerospace manufacturer and defense industry company. It was formed in February 9, 2015 from the merger of Orbital Sciences Corporation and parts of Alliant Techsystems (ATK). Orbital ATK designed, built, and de ...

’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 spur the development of Private spaceflight, private spacecraft and launch vehicles for deliveries to the International Space Station (ISS). Launched in 2006, COTS successful ...

(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 Latinisation of names, Latinised to Alpha Scorpii. Often referred to as "the heart of the scorpion", Antares is flanked by ...

, a medium-class launch vehicle; Cygnus, an advanced spacecraft using a Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) provided by industrial partner

Thales Alenia Space Thales Alenia Space () is a joint venture between the French technology corporation Thales Group (67%) and Italian defense conglomerate Leonardo (company), Leonardo (33%). The company is headquartered in Cannes, France. It provides space-based ...

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, a ...

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 less customized than specially-produced satelli ...

History

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 ...

and

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

, Texas.

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 Cranbroo ...

, 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 15:20UTC, 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 17:42UTC, 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.

References

External links