CAPE CANAVERAL: Orbital Sciences Corp, one of two companies hired by US space agency Nasa to make supply runs to the International Space Station, delivered its first cargo ship yesterday, a Nasa TV broadcast showed.
Space station flight engineer Mike Hopkins used the outpost’s 60-foot-long robotic arm to pluck a Cygnus freighter capsule from orbit at 6:08am EST (1108 GMT) as the two ships sailed 425km over the Indian Ocean, northeast of Madagascar.
“A big sigh of relief for Orbital,” said astronaut and Nasa TV commentator Catherine “Cady” Coleman from Mission Control in Houston.
About two hours later, Hopkins latched the capsule, which is about the size of a small bus, to a docking port on the space station’s Harmony module. The capsule is loaded with 1,461kg of food, equipment, science experiments and supplies for the station, including computers and replacement parts for Nasa’s spacesuits.
Several commercial payloads also are aboard the Cygnus freighter, including a “CubeSat” launcher owned by Houston-based NanoRacks. CubeSats are 4-inch-sided, standardised, relatively inexpensive spacecraft. They produce their own power, transmit signals and are used for a variety of scientific purposes. Individual CubeSats can be configured to fly together. The launcher will be operated from Japan’s Kibo module, which includes a small airlock, robotic arm and external platform. The Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency already operates a similar CubeSat launcher.
The Cygnus capsule is scheduled to remain docked to the outpost for about 45 days, and will be unpacked, then refilled with trash and items no longer needed aboard the station.
Astronauts will then use the station’s robot arm to remove the capsule and release it into orbit so it can drive itself into the atmosphere for incineration.
Reuters
