Orbital ATK (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 (COTS) program, Orbital ATK designed, acquired, built, and assembled these components: Antares, a medium-class launch vehicle; Cygnus, an advanced spacecraft using a Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) provided by industrial partner Thales Alenia Space and a Service Module based on the Orbital GEOStarsatellite bus.[6]
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.[7][when?]
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 and Houston, Texas.[6][when?]
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.[10]
The mission lifted off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport 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.[11]
Northrop Grumman reported that the spacecraft would still be able to reach the ISS. After assessing the situation, NASA determined a rendezvous was safe.[12] The vehicle reached the ISS on November 9.[13]
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. [17]
^"ISS Research Program". Glenn Research Center. NASA. 1 January 2020. Retrieved 4 April 2021. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
