Cygnus CRS-7 (OA-7,SS John Glenn)

Description:

• CYGNUS OA-7, also known as Orbital Sciences CRS Flight 7, is the eighth flight of the Orbital ATK unmanned resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its seventh 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. The OA-7 is named the S.S. John Glenn in honor of astronaut and senator John Glenn, the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth on Mercury 6 and the oldest to go to space on STS-95.

Mission details:

• On Apr 18, 2017 Cygnus mission OA-7, the S.S. John Glenn, was launched on ULA Atlas AV-070 from Cape Canaveral. The 7221 kg cargo ship carries about 140 kg of small satellites for later deployment and about 3250 kg of other cargo.
• The SS John Glenn (Cygnus OA-7) arrived at ISS on Apr 22, with grapple by Canadarm-2 at 1005 UTC and berthing on the Unity module at 1239 UTC.
• The Cygnus OA-7 cargo ship, SS John Glenn, was unberthed from the Unity module at 1105 UTC Jun 4, 2017 and released at 1310 UTC into orbit.
  On Jun 8 four SpireGlobal Lemur-2 satellites were ejected from the Nanoracks NRCSD-E deployer on the service module; the ejections were at 17:53 UTC and 21:03 UTC. OA-7 was deorbited on Jun 11, entering the atmosphere over the South Pacific at 1702 UTC.

External links:

• Cygnus fact sheet

Astrophilately covers:

Launch cancel KSC