This Smart News Release features multimedia. Following a 21-minute ascent, the “S.S. Deke Slayton II” Cygnus spacecraft was successfully deployed into its intended orbit approximately 144 miles above the Earth, inclined at 51.6 degrees to the equator.
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The vehicle pair of new UltraFlex solar arrays were fully deployed as planned and providing the requisite power to the vehicle and orbital communications was established. The space station remains the springboard to NASA’s next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars. The Cygnus spacecraft will dock at the ISS for two and half days. This is the first flight of an enhanced Cygnus spacecraft to the station. Orbital ATK bought another company’s rocket, the veteran Atlas V, for this supply mission.
NASA’s commercial resupply program was re-launched Sunday as an Atlas V rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral carrying a Cygnus spacecraft full of supplies for the International Space Station.
The rocket holds 7,400 pounds of supplies, all packed into a capsule named Cygnus after the swan constellation. NASA contracted two private companies to replenish the ISS, Orbital and SpaceX, but their rockets are grounded.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station, photographed the launch of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. It uses avionics systems from Orbital ATK’s flight-proven LEOStar™ and GEOStar™ satellite product lines, plus propulsion and power systems from Orbital ATK’s GEOStar communications satellites. It launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
United Launch Alliance builds and flies the powerful Atlas V, a workhorse normally used to hoist satellites for the Air Force and others.
Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital, an aerospace and defense company with annual revenues of about $4.4 billion, hopes to return its own Antares rocket to flight in May, following an October 2014 launch accident.
Orbital ATK is a global leader in aerospace and defense technologies.
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Science payloads will support science and research investigations that will occur during the space station’s Expeditions 45 and 46, including experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science – research that impacts life on Earth.
