Cargo spacecraft docks with ISS after solar panel fails to deploy - CNN

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory subject newsletter. Explore the beingness with quality connected fascinating discoveries, technological advancements and more.

CNN  — 

A cargo spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station Wednesday morning, contempt making its two-day trek done abstraction with lone 1 functioning star panel.

US defence contractor Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft, which was carrying 8,200 pounds of subject experiments and supplies for the astronauts connected committee the ISS, lifted disconnected from NASA’s motorboat tract successful Wallops Island, Virginia, atop an Antares rocket connected Monday.

A fewer hours aft Cygnus reached orbit and separated from the rocket, 1 of the spacecraft’s 2 star arrays failed to deploy, NASA announced.

Teams connected the crushed initially attempted to troubleshoot the issue, hoping to coax the star sheet open, but they were unsuccessful, according to a NASA connection released Tuesday. NASA and Northrop Grumman, which designed and built the Cygnus capsule, opted to wantonness those efforts successful bid to absorption connected carrying retired a harmless rendezvous with the ISS, noting that the spacecraft already had capable powerfulness to decorativeness its journey. Northrop Grumman did not instantly respond to a petition for further accusation Tuesday evening.

“The Cygnus squad is gathering accusation connected wherefore the 2nd array did not deploy arsenic planned,” NASA’s Tuesday statement noted.

The docking took spot astatine 5.20 a.m. ET Wednesday greeting arsenic the ISS flew implicit the Indian Ocean.

As the Cygnus capsule approached the ISS, NASA astronaut Nicole Mann utilized the abstraction station’s robotic limb to latch connected to the conveyance and resistance it toward its docking port.

Orbital ATK, an aerospace and defence institution acquired by Northrop Grumman successful 2017, was selected successful 2014 alongside Elon Musk’s SpaceX to make vehicles susceptible of taking cargo to the ISS. The Cygnus spacecraft has been flying regular cargo missions to the ISS for years and has 18 palmy missions nether its belt.

It has besides notched 1 failure. In 2014, the Antares rocket, which was besides developed by Orbital ATK, exploded soon aft taking off, destroying the spacecraft and grounding the Cygnus programme for much than a year.

The Cygnus capsule utilized for this week’s ngo was named the S.S. Sally Ride, a motion to the first American pistillate to alert to space. NASA said the resupply capsule “will stay astatine the abstraction presumption until January earlier it departs for a destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere.”

The cargo aboard this ngo includes supplies that volition enactment much than 250 subject experiments and different probe efforts, according to NASA. It’s besides carrying caller effect and vegetables for the crew, arsenic good arsenic vacation treats.