The cargo ship Cygnus headed to ISS

The American cargo spacecraft Cygnus was launched to the International space station (ISS). The truck's launch Cygnus using the launch of Antares took place from the Baikonur NASA wallops island in the Atlantic ocean off the coast of Virginia, according to ITAR-TASS.

This is already the second regular flight Cygnus to the ISS. He first made a docking with the station in January of this year.

Cygnus will deliver to the crew of the orbital complex over 1.5 tons of cargo, including food, water, spare parts, equipment and materials for scientific experiments. He, in particular, will bring to the ISS the mobile device for automatic control of radiation levels, light levels and air quality, as well as a prototype of the microsatellite, which in future will be used for rapid dispatch to Earth samples from various stations, spaceships or even other planets.

Cygnus docking with the ISS was scheduled for Tuesday. However, due to the fact that the launch was postponed twice due to weather conditions, the dock can be moved on the day. However, in any case, the order of this operation is known in advance. When the vehicle on command from the Earth closer to the orbiting complex at a distance of about 10 m, American astronaut Steven Swanson will take it with a 17-metre automatic hands-manipulator Canadarm, made the canadian space Agency. To help Swanson will be European space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, who then have to bring the ship to a docking Bay on the American Harmony module. In the current expedition to ISS includes Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Artemyev and Maxim Suraev and the American Reid Wiseman.

On the way back, Cygnus will be taken from the station's accumulated garbage there, and with it will burn in the dense layers of the atmosphere. Build a ship, like the Antares, a private American company Orbital Sciences, based in Virginia. Last year she successfully performed the first test flight of Cygnus to the ISS, and NASA then signed her to a contract worth $1.9 billion for eight launches of the truck for three years.
To deliver cargo to the station, US space Agency uses a private Dragon ship, built by the Californian company SpaceX. It is the world's only reusable truck and launched into orbit using the Falcon rocket. Dragon three times already made a docking with the ISS and needs to go to it nine more times. The contract between NASA and SpaceX valued at $1.6 billion.

Source: globalscience.ru