After launching on Nov. 7, #Cygnus was captured this morning at 5:20am ET by @AstroDuke and @astro_josh. Controls of the @Space_station’s robotic arm were then transferred to this team in Mission Control Houston, who are installing the spacecraft to the Unity module.
Ground Controllers Install Cygnus on StationMark GarciaPosted on November 9, 2022Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft installation on the International Space Station is now complete. Cygnus, carrying over 8,200 pounds of cargo and science experiments, launched atop an Antares rocket at 5:32 a.m. EST Monday, Nov. 7 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. At 5:20 a.m., NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, along with NASA astronaut Josh Cassada as backup, captured Cygnus using the Canadarm2 robotic arm.Cygnus also is delivering a new mounting bracket that astronauts will attach to the starboard side of the station’s truss assembly during a spacewalk planned for Nov. 15. The mounting bracket will enable the installation of one of the next pair of new solar arrays.Cygnus will remain at the space station until late January before it departs for a destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Not the same failure mode as the Lucy Megaflex arrays: that was a tangled deployment lanyard partway through gore deployment, but here the Ultraflex array has swung out, but not rotated to final attitude, and the gores remain fully stowed (i.e. issue occurred before lanyard drive would have even started).
Quote from: edzieba on 11/09/2022 11:51 amNot the same failure mode as the Lucy Megaflex arrays: that was a tangled deployment lanyard partway through gore deployment, but here the Ultraflex array has swung out, but not rotated to final attitude, and the gores remain fully stowed (i.e. issue occurred before lanyard drive would have even started). Your conclusion is premature. The only thing that has been determined is that there was negligent risk of sudden deploy of the array during approach, capture and berthing. Everything else, including the cause of the failure, is still being looked into.
Your conclusion is premature. The only thing that has been determined is that there was negligent risk of sudden deploy of the array during approach, capture and berthing. Everything else, including the cause of the failure, is still being looked into.
Strange that no one seems interested in the wild attitude change we all saw in the launch animation--something on the order of 140 degrees pointing change. Nothing to see here, move along?
In a press release, Northrop Grumman says the Cygnus spacecraft’s solar array deployment failure on NG-18 stemmed from a problem during a stage separation event on launch.An acoustic blanket from the Antares rocket lodged in one of the Cygnus solar array mechanisms.
"During a rocket stage separation event, debris from an Antares acoustic blanket became lodged in one of the Cygnus solar array mechanisms, preventing it from opening," said Cyrus Dhalla, vice president and general manager, Tactical Space Systems, Northrop Grumman. "Successful berthing was achieved thanks to Cygnus's robust design and the resilience and ingenuity of the NASA and Northrop Grumman teams."
But why did the blanket separate? Was there a deeper anomaly in the stage separation (like the attitude error some have suggested from watching the webcast) ??
Cargo resupply to the @Space_Station? ✅ Check out more photos from the Monday, Nov. 7, @northropgrumman #CRS18 launch carrying the Cygnus spacecraft full of supplies to the station. go.nasa.gov/3G6L3b5