Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft installation at the International Space Station is now complete. Cygnus, carrying over 8,200 pounds of cargo and science experiments, launched atop the company’s Antares rocket at 8:31 p.m. EDT Tuesday, Aug. 1, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. At 5:52 a.m., NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg, along with NASA astronaut Frank Rubio as backup, captured Cygnus using the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm.
Highlights of space station research facilitated by delivery aboard this Cygnus are:
- The final iteration of a series of spacecraft fire protection experiments
- A new potable water dispenserthat provides hot water and improved sanitization
- Neural cellsthat will be cultured into 3D cell models for gene therapy testing
- A probethat measures plasma density of the upper atmosphere
- A memory cardthat contains creative works from students around the world
Cygnus will remain at the space station until October before it departs for a destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
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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