Orbital ATK and NASA jointly developed a new space transportation system to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station (ISS). Under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, then Orbital Sciences designed and built Antares, a medium-class launch vehicle, with Ukrainian specialists providing first stage structure.[8]
Production and integration of Cygnus spacecraft are performed in Dulles, Virginia. The Cygnus service module is mated with the pressurized cargo module at the launch site, and mission operations are conducted from control centers in Dulles, Virginia and Houston, Texas.[9]
The original launch attempt on 9 February 2020 was scheduled to launch at 22:39:30UTC before being pushed to the end of its five-minute window at 22:44:29UTC, only to end up being scrubbed due to a technical issue with a regulator at the launch pad with three minutes left in the countdown.[11] The second launch attempt on 14 February 2020 at 20:43:34UTC was scrubbed due to strong upper winds with less than ninety minutes left in the countdown. Cygnus NG-13 was launched successfully on 15 February 2020 at 20:21:01UTC.
Launch and early operations
After Northrop Grumman purchased Orbital ATK in June 2018, the mission was changed from OA-13 to NG-13. The Antares rocket was built and processed in the Horizontal Integration Facility over the course of six months. The rocket was rolled out to MARS Pad 0A where it was originally planned to launch 9 February 2020 but was scrubbed and delayed due to inclement weather and an issue with a regulator at the launch pad. The mission launched successfully on the 15 February 2020 at 20:21:01UTC with no delay and no apparent problems. The Cygnus spacecraft arrived at the space station on 18 February 2020 at 09:05UTC. Expedition 62 astronaut Andrew Morgan grappled the spacecraft using the station's robotic arm. After Cygnus capture, ground controllers commanded the station's arm to rotate and install Cygnus on the Earth-facing port of the station's Unity module at 11:16UTC. The Cygnus spacecraft remained at the space station until 11 May 2020. The Saffire-IV experiment was conducted within Cygnus after it departs the station, and prior to deorbit, when it disposed of several tons of trash during reentry into Earth's atmosphere, over the Pacific Ocean, on 29 May 2020.[1]
The Cygnus spacecraft was loaded with 3,377 kilograms (7,445 lb) of pressurized cargo with packaging, broken down as follows:[14]
Vehicle hardware: 1,588 kg (3,501 lb)
Science investigations: 966 kg (2,129 lb)
Crew supplies: 712 kg (1,570 lb)
Spacewalk equipment: 81 kg (179 lb)
Computer resources: 30 kg (66 lb)
Hardware
NASA provided the following breakdown of the cargo's hardware for ISS:[14]
Columbus Ka-band Terminal (COLKa) Assembly: module enhancement hardware to upgrade the communications capability in Columbus science module
Major Constituents Analyzer (MCA) Mass Spectrometer: critical spare to support laboratories and connecting module operations of the MCAs to detect atmospheric constituents on board the space station
External High Definition Camera (EHDC) Assembly: major camera assembly spare that will replace a failed camera on-orbit during a spring 2020 EVA
Water Stowage System (WSS) Resupply Tanks (RST): nine water tanks to support crew and hardware requirements during the 2020 timeframe
Nitrogen/Oxygen Recharge System (NORS) Tanks: two recharge tanks to replenish on-orbit oxygen to be utilized in upcoming spacewalks, and one air tank to support the Commercial Crew Vehicle (CCV) Emergency Breathing Air Assembly (CEBAA) hardware launching in 2020
POLAR Flight Assembly: cold stowage capability to support payload transportation to the ISS
Research
The new experiments arriving at the orbiting laboratory will challenge and inspire future scientists and explorers, and provide valuable insight for researchers. Experiments will test new facilities for microscopic viewing and cell culturing, and particle identification will seek to better understand how fire spreads in microgravity and will study how bacteriophages behave in space. The Saffire-IV experiment will occur after Cygnus leaves the ISS.[14]
Mobile SpaceLab, a tissue and cell culturing facility that offers investigators a quick-turnaround platform to perform sophisticated microgravity biology experiments. This will be mounted in a designated EXPRESS rack on ISS [15]
Mochii, initial demonstration of a new miniature scanning electron microscope (SEM) with spectroscopy
Spacecraft Fire Experiment-IV (Saffire-IV), fourth in a series of experiments on fire and combustibles [15]
OsteoOmics examines osteoblast cells at a molecular level to better understand bone loss [15]
Phage Evolution studies the effects of microgravity and radiation exposure on bacteriophages and their hosts
Cubesats
Cubesats planned for release: Red-Eye 2, DeMI, TechEdSat 10.[16] A CubeSat payload for the communications provider Lynk (2020-011D) was ejected from the Slingshot deployer on Cygnus on 13 May 2020 at 23:25UTC. Another payload (another Lynk, or perhaps WIDAR) remained attached to Cygnus and deployed a communications antenna. The payloads were launched aboard SpaceX CRS-20 and installed on the Cygnus hatch by the ISS crew.[2] The Cygnus host a NASA combustion experiment inside its pressurized cabin before Northrop Grumman controllers command the spacecraft to a destructive re-entry over the South Pacific Ocean on 29 May 2020.[3]
Disposal
Cygnus NG-13 is another test of the Cygnus External Payload Carrier. Europe's HDEV experiment which has provided outstanding views of the Earth would return home on Cygnus NG-13.
Launches are separated by dots ( • ), payloads by commas ( , ), multiple names for the same satellite by slashes ( / ). Crewed flights are underlined. Launch failures are marked with the † sign. Payloads deployed from other spacecraft are (enclosed in parentheses).
