International Space Station and crew awaiting Atlas 5 launch of Cygnus

• CAPE CANAVERAL — Lending a helping hand to resume the stalled U.S. supply chain to the International Space Station, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will send a commercial Cygnus cargo craft in pursuit of the outpost Thursday.

• With Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket and the Space X Falcon 9 both grounded by failures, a pair of Atlas 5 boosters stand ready as gap-fillers to launch Cygnus vessels over the next 100 days from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

• Space X and Orbital ATK — the two providers under NASA’s privatized Commercial Resupply Services program that took over after retirement of the space shuttles — have been the conveyer belts to ferry cargo, food and new science experiments to the station from U.S. soil since 2012.

• But the Antares failure in October 2014 and the Falcon mishap this past June left the station solely dependent on its international partners to carry out resupply in the interim.

• Six weeks after the Antares rocket exploded above its Virginia launch pad, destroying the third operational Cygnus, Orbital ATK struck a deal with United Launch Alliance for its first Atlas 5 rocket. The deal to purchase the second Atlas for Cygnus was announced this past August.

• The Atlas 5 launches, bought commercially by Orbital ATK, will occur Thursday and March 10, boosting more than 15,000 pounds of cargo to the station on the two flights.

• “When we lost Orb-3 (in Oct. 2014), literally the next day we were on the phone to other launch providers. We probably talked to half or two-thirds of all the possible providers in the world about getting a ride for Cygnus,” said Dan Tani, a former astronaut who spent 120 days living and working aboard the station on Expedition 16 and now serves as Orbital ATK’s manager of mission and cargo operations.

• “Atlas had the magic mixture of the performance we needed, electrical and mechanical interfaces that we could make compatible with us and, most importantly, they had an open opportunity late in 2015,” Tani said.

• The Atlas 5 has flown 59 times since 2002, all successfully, completing 23 flights for the Department of Defense, 12 for the National Reconnaissance Office, 12 for NASA and 12 commercial missions.

• It is very humbling that Orbital ATK and NASA put the confidence in ULA for this critical mission. The new supplies and science need to get there,” said Kevin Leslie, ULA’s OA-4 mission manager.

• But they allow Orbital ATK to fulfill its duties to NASA while working in parallel to redesign its Antares rocket, removing the Soviet-era main engines and replacing them with modern Russian powerplants.

• “CRS is one of the biggest contracts we carry in the company, and we have a moral and financial obligation to deliver the cargo to the space station,” Tani said.

• The company hopes to complete testing and restart Antares launches from Virginia as early as next May.

• Falcon could resume its Dragon capsule flights to the station in early 2016.

• “It’s important that we restart cargo deliveries to ISS,” said Randy Gordon of KSC’s International Space Station mission support office.

Keywords -United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket will send a commercial Cygnus cargo craft,Space X and Orbital ATK,

Kindly Bookmark and Share it: