A robotic cargo ship departed the space station on Friday (December 22) for a devastating re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, scheduled for early 2024.
Northrop Grumman’s unmanned spacecraft Cygnus NG-19 departs from Earth. international space station (ISS) Friday 8:06 a.m. ET (13:06 GMT). NASA official Rebecca Turkington said on a NASA TV livestream that the robotic arm Canadarm2 released the spacecraft over the North Atlantic Ocean just one minute behind schedule.
“It was a great ejection from above,” Loral O’Hara, an astronaut on NASA’s Expedition 70, said on a livestream about 10 minutes after the ejection. “Congratulations to everyone on the ground who supported this mission,” O’Hara added from the ISS. “The constellation Cygnus is still visible. It’s very beautiful.”
Cygnus spent 4.5 months in the orbiting complex after arriving on August 4 with 8,200 pounds (3,800 kilograms) of hardware, supplies, scientific and commercial products, and other cargo. NASA officials said Released on Wednesday (December 20th).
Related: Cygnus space freighter arrives at space station with 8,200 pounds of cargo
NG-19 is Northrop Grumman’s 19th commercial resupply mission. NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility NG-19 is named after NASA astronaut Laurel Clark, who died (along with six other astronauts) in the 2003 Columbia Space Shuttle disaster. NG-19 was also the last mission launched with Northrop Grumman’s version. Antares rocket with a first stage manufactured in Ukraine.
The spacecraft docked with the ISS’s U.S. Unity module. earth– Port facing. To detach the cargo ship, flight controllers on the ground instructed the robot Canadarm2 to perform steps to move the cargo ship and detach it. NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara “will monitor Cygnus’ systems as it departs from the space station,” NASA officials wrote in a release before the exercise.
The exact date Cygnus will return to Earth has not been announced.spaceship operates in private “Secondary Payload Manipulation” Before the entry order was issued in early January earth’s atmospheregarbage is piled up there and burned.
Another commercial cargo ship currently working for NASA, space x‘s dragon The capsule is designed to survive a fiery journey through Earth’s atmosphere and fall into the ocean, allowing science to be brought back to Earth.