A technical problem canceled Cygnus cargo’s launch on February 9. NASA declared that the cargo’s mission to the ISS would be delayed untile officials will find a solution. The Northrop Grumman Antares spacecraft was prepared for a February 9 at 5:39 PM, transporting a Cygnus cargo on a mission assigned NG-13.
The liftoff was initially pushed to the end of its five-minute gap and then canceled a few minutes later, right before the modified release period. Northrop Gruman and NASA stated that almost three hours after the cancellation, the liftoff was delayed due to “off-nominal readings from a ground support sensor.”
The launch has been reprogrammed for February 13 at 4.06 PM because of both times to solve the problem and bad weather in the forecast.
NASA Canceled the Cygnus Liftoff to the ISS
The Cygnus has 3,633 kilograms of cargo, including almost 1,600 kilograms of device hardware and approximately 1,000 kilograms of science payloads. Crew extra and other tools represent the rest of the shipment. As NASA’s decision to reprogramming this mission, the space agency might be changing future projects, as well. Such a thing could resurface to display the situation of the station’s crew.
By April, the station will get only a three-person team, even a single NASA astronaut, Chris Cassidy, for a possibly staying of a few months. Doubt about when it comes to commercial crew devices will fly, and the period of their missions has developed quite the challenge for the space agencies. They need to plan precisely the resources required for the ISS and the research that can be developed there.
“We’re trying to position ourselves to have the most flexibility possible to get the most and highest quality science done as we hope to see our commercial crew vehicle arrive sometime this year,” explained the manager of NASA’s ISS Transportation Integration Office, Ven Feng.