Cygnus CRS-10 (OA-10, NG-10E)

Launch data:

Description:

• CYGNUS OA-10, also known as Orbital Sciences CRS Flight 10, is the x flight of the Orbital ATK unmanned resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its nineth flight to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. Orbital 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 System (COTS) program, then Orbital Sciences designed and built Antares, a medium-class launch vehicle; Cygnus, an advanced maneuvering spacecraft, and a Pressurized Cargo Module which is provided by Orbital′s industrial partner Thales Alenia Space.

Mission details:

• The S.S. John Young cargo ship, Northrop Grumman′s Cygnus-CRS10 (NG-10 mission), was launched from MARS (the Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia) on Nov 17, 2018. It arrived at ISS on the morning of Nov 19.
  Canadarm-2 grappled it at 1028 UTC and berthed it at the nadir port on the Unity module at 1233 UTC.
• On Oct 22, 2018 the Loop Heat Pipe Radiator (LHPR) experiment was taken outside the Kibo airlock with the JEM-RMS robot arm. LHPR is a test of a thermal control system for JAXA′s future ETS-9 technology satellite. LHPR was operated while exposed to space on the end of the JEM-RMS until Nov 20, when it was brought back inside Kibo.
• On Feb 7, 2019 the Slingshot deployer, launched aboard Dragon CRS-16, was mounted on the nose of Cygnus NG-10, currently berthed on the Unity node. Slingshot was developed by SEOPS LLC, now part of Hypergiant Galactic of Houston.
• On Feb 8, 2019 at about 1345 UTC the Cygnus NG-10 (S.S. John Young) was unberthed from the Unity node and at 1616 UTC it was released into orbit. After departing ISS, the cargo ship SS John Young was in a 405 x 418 km orbit slightly above the station. By 2130 UTC it had made two burns to raise orbit to 453 x 460 km im preparation for cubesat deploys.
• Cygnus/Slingshot deployed the Hypergiant Galactic/SEOPS Quantum Radar 1 and 2 cubesats at 0000:00 UTC on Feb 9, 2019.
  On Feb 13 at 1200 the Cygnus Nanoracks NRCSD-E deployer ejected MySat and NRL′s CHEFSAT 2. CHEFSAT-2′s mission is to space-qualify consumer-grade E-band (mm-wave) devices.
• Later on Feb 13, Cygnus made a further series of burns to lower its orbit to only 293 x 306 km, below the ISS, and at 2245 UTC the NRCSD-E ejected KickSat-2, which contains over 100 small 5-gram Sprite chipsats. It is unclear when and if the Sprites will be ejected from Kicksat-2; the Kicksat-2 beacon has been detected but is very weak and it appears its antenna did not deploy correctly.
• The Cygnus NG-10 freighter, the S.S. John Young, was deorbited over the Pacific Ocean and reentered at around 145W 40S over the "spacecraft graveyard" east of New Zealand at 0905 UTC Feb 25, 2019 after 100.0 days in space.

External links:

• Cygnus fact sheet

Astrophilately covers:

Launch cancel Wallops Island. Credit: #402

CRS-10 Deorbit. Credit: #411