U.S. Cygnus Space Freighter Departs Station

ISS — Expedition 60 Mission patch / Northrop Grumman — Cygnus NG-11 Mission patch.

August 6, 2019

Image above: The U.S. Cygnus space freighter from Northrop Grumman was released from the station’s robotic arm today at 11:15 a.m. EDT. Image Credit: NASA TV.

The Cygnus spacecraft successfully departed the International Space Station three months after arriving at the space station to deliver 7,600 of supplies and scientific experiments to the orbiting laboratory.

NG-11: SS Roger Chaffee Cygnus departure

Video above: Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, dubbed the SS Roger Chaffee, departed the International Space Station on 6 August 2019, at 16:16 UTC (12:15 EDT). The NG-11 Cygnus Cargo Delivery Spacecraft is named in honor of the American astronaut Roger Chaffe, the pilot of the Apollo 1 spacecraft, the first manned mission of the Apollo program. Cygnus delivered about 3450 kilograms (7600 pounds) of cargo to the International Space Station. Video Credits: NASA TV/SciNews.

The Cygnus spacecraft will now remain in orbit until mid-December and coincide with a second Cygnus spacecraft scheduled for launch to the space station in October. This will be the first extended duration flight to demonstrate spacecraft’s capability to fly two Cygnus vehicles simultaneously and support hosted payloads for longer periods of time.

The crew outfitted Cygnus with the SlingShot Deployer that will eject a series of nanosatellites once the spacecraft reaches a safe distance and a higher altitude from the station. Cygnus will continue orbiting Earth for a few more months of systems tests before it reenters the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean for a fiery demise.

Image above: Expedition 60 Flight Engineers (clockwise from top) Luca Parmitano, Andrew Morgan and Nick Hague work on life support maintenance inside the U.S. Destiny laboratory module. Image Credit: NASA.

Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency started Monday collecting his blood samples and stowing them in a science freezer for later analysis. Next, he wore virtual reality goggles for an experiment testing his ability to judge the duration of time. Results are collected before, during and after a spaceflight to understand how time perception is affected in space. The impacts could potentially affect space navigation and other mission-oriented tasks.

Commander Alexey Ovchinin tested Russian smoke detectors, conducted a fit check of the Soyuz MS-12 crew ship seats and worked on space biology gear. Cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov checked out video gear then studied how microgravity affects pain sensation.

Related articles:

Northrop Grumman Carries Technology, Scientific Investigations on Mission to Space Station
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/04/northrop-grumman-carries-technology.html

Liftoff!
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2019/04/liftoff.html

Related links:

Expedition 60: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition60/index.html

SlingShot Deployer: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/slingshot-small-satellite-deployment-test

BioFabrication Facility: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Facility.html?#id=7599

Time perception: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/explorer/Investigation.html?#id=7504

Pain sensation: https://www.energia.ru/en/iss/researches/human/17.html

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.

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