Northrop Grumman - Cygnus CRS NG-17 Mission patch.
June 20, 2022
On Monday at 10:20 a.m. Central time, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus NG CRS-17 engine was scheduled to fire for 5 minutes, 1 second to test the cargo craft’s ability to reboost the International Space Station in the future. The engine firing was aborted after five seconds. Cygnus’ Mission Director at Dulles, Virginia reported that the cause for the abort is understood and under review.
Image above: International Space Station Configuration: Five spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom; the Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter; and Russia’s Soyuz MS-21 crew ship and the Progress 80 and 81 resupply ships. Image Credit: NASA.
Late this afternoon in their evening planning conference with flight controllers in Houston, the crew was informed that NASA and Northrop Grumman are working on a plan for Cygnus to try another reboost attempt as early as Saturday, June 25 that would lead to Cygnus potentially departing the station next Tuesday, June 28. The plan will be discussed with the International Space Station partners later this week.
The reboost is designed to provide Cygnus with an enhanced capability for station operations as a standard service for NASA.
Related article:
Crew Wraps Week with Research Hardware Work, Cygnus Packing
https://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.com/2022/06/crew-wraps-week-with-research-hardware.html
Related links:
Northrop Grumman: https://www.northropgrumman.com/
International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Mark Garcia.
Best regards, Orbiter.ch
