Well… I guess it was prescient not to make a graphic last night. The Cygnus is in a stable orbit, but so far has missed two attempts to fire up the engines to lift it to an orbit where the ISS CanArm might pluck it — and attach it to the station on Tuesday night.
The plan is to de-bug the underpressure reading, and then fire the engine — likely in the next 12 hours, so Cygnus will still be on schedule for ISS intercept in the wee hours of Tuesday night. Here’s the latest, from NASA’s blog on it all:
…Shortly after launch, the spacecraft missed its first burn slated for 11:44 a.m. due to a late entry to burn sequencing. Known as the targeted altitude burn, or TB1, it was rescheduled for 12:34 p.m., but aborted the maneuver shortly after the engine ignited due to a slightly low initial pressure state. There is no indication the engine itself has any problem at this time.
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft completed the deployment of its two solar arrays at 2:21 p.m. EDT after launching at 11:02 a.m. Aug. 4 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida to the International Space Station for NASA….
Cygnus is at a safe altitude, and Northrop Grumman engineers are working a new burn and trajectory plan. The team aims to achieve the spacecraft’s original capture time on station, which is currently slated for 3:10 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 6….
Not the “A” answer, to be certain — but as we’ve long said — space is… hard. It leaves me again marvelling, at all the Apollo missions, and most of the Mercury ones… that went off exactly as drawn up. Amazing — those were wildly-capable engineers, without a doubt. More, as we get it from NASA’s blogs. Onward.
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