Cygnus reaches International Space Station

NASA had reason to celebrate this month as the Orbital Cygnus reached the International Space Station safe and sound with all the cargo loaded into it. The Cygnus supply spacecraft carried many new science experiments from across the country and the world to the orbiting space laboratory.

What made this delivery to the ISS special was that it was  the first successful contracted cargo delivery by Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., for NASA. The space station crew  used a robotic arm to capture and attach the Cygnus supply spacecraft to the ISS at its Harmony Node. The 2,780 pounds (1,261 kilograms) of supplies aboard the spacecraft seem to have survived the ride well,

The cargo is made up of vital science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and other hardware.Cygnus was launched on the company’s Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.  It took roughly three days to reach the ISS.

The different science projects that it carried will have some time in space to materialize. These include experiments sent in by 23 students. Cygnus will remain attached to Harmony until a planned unberthing in the month of February  will send the spacecraft toward a destructive re-entry in Earth’s atmosphere.