At 4:44 a.m. EST, NASA astronaut Raja Chari, with NASA astronaut Kayla Barron acting as backup, captured Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft over the Indian Ocean. Mission control in Houston will send ground commands for the station’s arm to rotate and install it on the station’s Unity module Earth-facing port.
Cygnus spacecraft launched Saturday on an Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia at 12:40 p.m. EST. This is Northrop Grumman’s 17th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station for NASA. The Cygnus spacecraft is carrying a fresh supply of 8,300 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory.
The Cygnus spacecraft is named the S.S. Piers Sellers in honor of the late NASA astronaut who spent nearly 35 days across three missions helping to construct the space station.
NASA Television, the NASA app, and agency’s website will provide live coverage of the spacecraft’s installation beginning at 6:30 a.m.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
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