He delivered 3.7 tons of payloads to the station
NEW YORK, August 12. /TASS/. The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) has completed the docking of the American Cygnus cargo ship of Northrop Grumman Corporation, which delivered 3.7 tons of payloads to the station. The broadcast is carried out on the website of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
After conducting a remote capture of the ship using the Canadarm 2 manipulator arm, American Megan MacArthur and Frenchman Tom Pesquet took three hours and 35 minutes to complete the docking process. It is expected that the spacecraft will stay in orbit for about three months, after which it will take garbage and waste from the station and in about two weeks it will burn up in the dense layers of the atmosphere.
The American Antares launch vehicle with an automatic Cygnus spacecraft launched from the spaceport on Wallops Island (east coast of the United States, Virginia) on Tuesday. The spacecraft, which was named after the first American astronaut with Asian roots who went into space, Allison Onizuki (1946-1986), took less than two days to deliver 3.7 tons of supplies, materials and equipment to the station.
On board Cygnus there is a 3D printer that uses a material that simulates the soil of the Moon to test the possibility of its use in the construction of various structures in future space missions, a device for cleaning the air from carbon dioxide on spacecraft using new technologies, a mounting bracket that is supposed to be installed on the supporting frame of solar panels.
The previous launch of such a ship took place on February 20, it undocked from the ISS on June 29. Cargo is also delivered to the station by SpaceX Dragon ships under a contract with NASA. Russians Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov, Americans Shane Kimbrough, Mark Vande Hai and Megan MacArthur, Frenchman Tom Pesquet and Japanese Akihiko Hoshide are on duty at the ISS.
