A Northrop Grumman rocket carrying greater than 4 tons of provides for the Worldwide House Station must wait at the very least yet one more day to launch after a fireplace alarm at its mission management heart thwarted a liftoff early Sunday (Nov. 6).
The Antares rocket was about 10 minutes away from a deliberate liftoff at 5:50 a.m. EST (1050 GMT) from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, when Northrop Grumman referred to as off the flight. A fireplace alarm on the firm’s management heart in close by Dulles, Virginia, compelled a constructing evacuation, stopping launch controllers from going via with the launch.
“Our ideas are with their group their their security is on the high most necessary, so we’re going to attempt it once more tomorrow,” NASA spokesperson Chelsey Ballarte mentioned throughout stay commentary. Liftoff is now set for Monday, Nov. 6, at 5:27 a.m. EST (1027 GMT). You possibly can watch the Cygnus cargo launch live on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, starting at 5 a.m. EST (1000 GMT).
Northrop Grumman will use its Antares rocket to launch the uncrewed NG-18 Cygnus spacecraft to the Worldwide House Station on a mission to ship greater than 8,200 kilos (3,720 kilograms) of provides to the lab’s astronaut crew. It’s the 18th cargo mission for NASA by Northrop Grumman.
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The upcoming launch can also be Northrop Grumman’s heaviest supply but, with the corporate squeezing in about 44 kilos (20 kg) of further provides as a consequence of refinements to the launch system. Amongst its valuable cargo are a bioprinter that may try to print human knee cartilage in space and cow ovarian cells to review how weightlessness impacts the expansion of cells.
If all goes nicely, the NG-18 Cygnus cargo ship — which has been named the SS Sally Ride in honor of astronaut Sally Ride, the primary American lady in space who died in 2012 — ought to arrive on the space station on Wednesday (Nov. 10).
E-mail Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com (opens in new tab) or observe him @tariqjmalik (opens in new tab). Comply with us @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab), Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab).
