NG-18 was the eighteenth 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 tec ...

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 eve ...

Cygnus and its seventeenth flight to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest Modular design, modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos ( ...

(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-2) 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, succeedi ...

. The mission successfully launched on 7 November 2022 at 10:32:42 UTC. This was the seventh 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 ...

(now ''Northrop Grumman Innovation 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 ...

, 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 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 manufactur ...

and a Service Module based on the Orbital

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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- ...

History

Cygnus NG-18 was the seventh Cygnus mission under the Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract. ''Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems'' confirmed on 23 February 2021 that Thales Alenia Space of Turin, Italy, will fabricate two additional Pressurized Cargo Modules (PCMs) for a pair of forthcoming Commercial Resupply Services-2 missions. Current plans are for the two additional Cygnus spacecraft to be designated NG-18 and NG-19. 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 List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...

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 thirteenth flight of the Enhanced-sized Cygnus PCM. The vehicle was named the S.S. ''

Sally Ride Sally Kristen Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American astronaut and physicist. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978, and in 1983 became the first American woman and the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts ...

'', after the first American woman in space.

Flight

NG-18 was originally scheduled to launch on 6 November 2022. However, a fire alarm resulted in an evacuation of Northrop Grumman's control center, and the flight was postponed to the next day. The mission lifted off from the

Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) is a commercial space launch facility located at the southern tip of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island in Virginia, just east of the Delmarva Peninsula and south of Chincoteague, Virgin ...

on 7 November 2022. About six hours into the flight, NASA announced that one of the two solar arrays failed to deploy. The deploy failure was attributed to acoustic blanket debris being lodged into solar-array mechanisms during a stage separation event. Northrop Grumman reported that the spacecraft would still be able to reach the ISS. After assessing the situation, NASA determined a rendezvous was safe. The vehicle reached the ISS on November 9.

Manifest

The Cygnus spacecraft is loaded with of research, hardware, and crew supplies. * Crew supplies: * Science investigations: * Spacewalk equipment: * Vehicle hardware: * Computer resources:

Research

The new experiments arriving at the orbiting laboratory will inspire future scientists and explorers, and provide valuable insight for researchers. NASA Glenn Research Center studies: * The Solid Fuel Ignition and Extinction - Material Ignition and Suppression Test (SoFIE-MIST) investigation examines thermally-assisted burning in microgravity, by varying parameters including air flow speed, oxygen concentration, pressure, and level of external radiation.

References

External links

Northrop Grumman Commercial Resupply, NASA page
{{Orbital launches in 2022 Cygnus (spacecraft) Supply vehicles for the International Space Station Spacecraft launched in 2022 Spacecraft launched by Antares rockets