SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying Northrup Grumman NG-20 Cygnus launches from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral on January 30, 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer / Talk of Titusville
SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 carrying the Northrup Grumman NG-20 mission towards ISS this afternoon. The launch was at 12:07 PM EST from the company’s launch pad at SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and once it had completed its part of the mission, Booster 1077 completed its tenth flight when it safely touched down at Landing Zone 1, about 5.6 miles to the south of where it launched a little more than eight minutes earlier.
A previous Cygnus space craft in the grasp of ISS’s Canadarm2. Photo: NASA
Today’s launch was the first of three that Northrup Grumman has contracted with SpaceX, and is the twentieth ISS resupply mission that the company has flown. According to NASA, the Cygnus cargo spacecraft is carrying 3,017 pounds of experiments, 2,493 pounds of hardware, 2,490 pounds of crew supplies, 149 pounds of computer resources and 35 pounds of spacewalk equipment.
SpaceX Performs Late-Load For First Time
Some of that cargo was loaded in the past 24 hours — foodstuffs (ice cream for the astronauts is rumored to be that portion of the payload) as well as some of the materials for science experiments required a “late-load,” which is a new capability for SpaceX that necessitated a one-delay from the initial planned launch date of January 29.
“We’re going to do a late-load activity into the Cygnus vehicle [so] we modified the fairing that’s the covering that goes on the outside of the Falcon rocket to include a 5-foot by 4-foot wide door. It essentially allows us to enter into the fairing area and put late-load car cargo in,” William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president ofBuild and Flight Reliability, said in a news conference on January 26th.
Booster B1077 descending towards its landing on Tuesday January 30, 2024 Photo: Charles Boyer / Talk of Titusville
Cygnus is expected to arrive at the International Space Station, where it will be docked to the orbiting facility’s Unity module by astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli.
Arrival At Space Station Will Be On Thursday
Now in orbit, the Cygnus cargo spacecraft will arrive at the International astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli will grapple it using ISS’s Canadarm 2 robotic arm, and the crew will then dock Cygnus to the Unity module. Following some normal checkouts, later, astronauts will then open the hatch to Cygnus and will begin to unload the cargo within the spacecraft.
The Cygus spacecraft is expected to stay at the International Space Station for up to six months. The spacecraft may perform additional services such as reboosting the station’s orbit to counteract atmospheric drag. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus provides the only U.S. spacecraft reboost capability for the International Space Station.
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Liftoff As Seen Around The Space Coast
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Falcon 9 in flight as it approaches the speed of sound. Photo: Richard Gallagher / Florida Media NowFalcon 9 lifting off from SLC-40 in Cape Canaveral. Photo: Charles Boyer / Talk of TitusvilleA vapor cone at the top of Falcon 9 caused by adiabatic cooling. Photo: Richard Gallagher / Florida Media NowLiftoff of Falcon 9 as seen from the NASA Press Site. Photo: Richard Gallagher, Florida Media NowA “light-saber” timelapse of Falcon 9’s liftoff. Photo: Chris Leymarie, Florida Media NowFalcon 9 touching down at Landing Zone 1. Photo: Ed Cordero, Florida Media NowFalcon 9 lifts off, as seen from the NASA Press Site. Photo: Charles Boyer, Talk of TitusvilleBooster 1077 descending towards landing, as seen from NASA Press Site. Photo: Charles Boyer, Talk of TitusvilleFalcon 9 lifts off. As seen from SLC-40, Charles Boyer, Talk of TitusvilleFalcon 9 lifts off. As seen from KARS Park. Photo: Ed Cordero, Florida Media NowBooster 1077 descending in freefall. Photo: Ed Cordero, Florida Media NowBooster 1077’s landing burn at LZ-1. Photo: Ed Cordero, Florida Media Now
The launch of Northrup-Grumman’s Cygnus NG-20 has been delayed until Tuesday, January 30th at 12:07 PM EST.
William Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vice president ofBuild and Flight Reliability, said in a news conference on January 26th that, “it’s taken a lot of modifications on our part to get this hardware ready to go fly, and we want to make sure it goes right. We think it is good to delay a little bit and make sure we get all this activity right and we’re ready to get this cargo inserted into Cygnus and get ready to fly on Tuesday.”
The launch is scheduled for 12:07 PM EST with an instantaneous window from Cape Canaveral’s SLC-40. Approximately eight minutes after launching, the booster used for this mission will return to the Cape to land at LZ-1, SpaceX’s landing facility located about 5.6 miles to the south of the launch pad. For more information about Cygnus and its cargo, see our original article regarding the launch here.
The Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft’s pressurized cargo module (PCM) for the company’s 20th commercial resupply mission is lifted and moved by crane inside the high bay in the Space Station Processing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday, Sept. 18, 2023. The next step is vehicle processing for the mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, will be from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40. Photo: NASA
Northrup-Grumman’s Cygnus CRS-2 will will be the 20th resupply mission carried out as part of NG’s Commercial Resupply contract with NASA, and will ferry supplies for the station’s crew, equipment, as well as new scientific experiments to the orbiting outpost.
After having flown on Atlas V and their Antares booster, Northrup Grumman is launching on a SpaceX rocket for the first time, and to launch the voluminous Cygnus spacecraft, SpaceX has been required to make some changes to Falcon 9 fairings and launch equipment. In order to be sure that those changes were completed correctly, the company delayed the launch by at least one day.
SpaceX Modifications To Launch Cygnus
“We’re completing some modifications to the launchpad to to get it ready to to go fly. We still have quite a bit of work in front of us,” Gerstenmaier said on Friday.
After having flown on Atlas V and their Antares booster, Northrup Grumman is launching on a SpaceX rocket for the first time, and to launch the voluminous Cygnus spacecraft, SpaceX has been required to make some changes to Falcon 9 fairings and launch equipment. In order to be sure that those changes were completed correctly, SpaceX delayed the launch by at least one day.
“We’re going to do a late-load activity into the Cygnus vehicle [so] we modified the fairing that’s the covering that goes on the outside of the Falcon rocket to include a 5-foot by 4-foot wide door. It essentially allows us to enter into the fairing area and put late-load car cargo in,” Gerstenmaier said.
He then continued, “Some of [the payload’s components] are going to be delivered in this late-load cargo that goes through this new hatch we put in place. It’s it’s more than just a hatch, actually, we have an environmentally controlled area so we don’t bring any kind of debris or contamination in.”
SpaceX has added clean-room facilities to accommodate those requirements, in addition to the fairing modifications that Gerstenmaier mentions above. That said, it is understandable why the company wants to ensure that it completes every item remaining on its checklist for releasing those modifications to an actual flight without the pressure of a looming launch deadline.
“The front part of Cygnus is very sensitive as it bursts to station,” Gerstenmaier said. “There’s some rings that seal it to [the] space station. We cannot contaminate those rings, we have to make sure that the cargo is delivered safely through this door into the fairing and then carefully placed inside Cygnus for launch, so that’s a pretty intense activity this will be the first time we’ve done that.”
“It’s taken a lot of modifications on our part to get this hardware ready to go fly we want to make sure it’s right, so we think it’s it’s good to delay a little bit and make sure that we get all this activity right, and we’re ready to get this cargo safely inserted into Cygnus and get it ready to fly on Tuesday,” Gerstenmaier concluded.
Northrup-Grumman’s Booster Issues
Initially, the Commercial Resupply Services contract that NG is fulfilling was by Orbital Sciences, then Orbital-ATK after a merger, and finally Northrup Grumman when it acquired Orbital-ATK. With the CRS contract, Northrup Grumman inherited the Antares series of boosters, with the last flight of Antares being on August 1, 2023.
An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket is seen on launch Pad-0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Monday, January 6, 2014 in advance of the launch on Thursday, January 9th. Photo: NASA
After retiring the Antares series due to supply issues — the first stage was manufactured by Ukrainian companies Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, and Russian firm NPO Energomash manufactured the booster’s two RD-181 engines — Northrop announced that it would develop a new first stage and engines for the Antares launch vehicle in a collaboration with Cedar Park, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace. The new rocket has been dubbed Antares-330 and is now expected to first fly in 2025.
The Tuesday launch will be the first of three contracted with SpaceX to launch Cygnus.
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