Cygnus NG-10


Cygnus NG-10, also known as CRS-10, previously known as CRS OA-10E, is the eleventh flight of the Northrop Grumman uncrewed resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its tenth flight to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. The mission launched on 17 November 2018 at 4:01 AM EST. This particular mission is part of an extension of the initial CRS contract that enables NASA to cover the ISS resupply needs until the Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract enters in effect.
Orbital ATK and NASA jointly developed a new space transportation system to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. Under the Commercial Orbital Transportation System program, then Orbital Sciences designed and built Antares, a medium-class launch vehicle; Cygnus, an advanced maneuvering spacecraft, and a Pressurized Cargo Module which is provided by Orbital's industrial partner Thales Alenia Space. Northrop Grumman purchased Orbital in June 2018, and it was renamed Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems.

History

The COTS demonstration mission was successfully conducted in September 2013, and Orbital commenced operational ISS cargo missions under the Commercial Resupply Service program with two missions in 2014. Regrettably, the third operational mission, Orb CRS-3, resulted was not successful due to spectacular Antares failure during launch. The company decided to discontinue the Antares 100 series and accelerate the introduction of a new propulsion. The Antares system will be upgraded with newly built RD-181 first-stage engines to provide greater payload performance and increased reliability.
In the meantime, the company had contracted with United Launch Alliance for an Atlas V launch of CRS OA-4 in late 2015 from Cape Canaveral, FL, with a second Atlas V Cygnus launch in 2016. The company had planned Cygnus missions for the first, second and fourth quarters of 2016. Two of which flew on the new Antares 230 and one on the aforementioned second Atlas V. These three missions enabled Orbital ATK to cover their initial CRS contracted payload obligation. This particular mission, known as NG-10E, is part of an extension program that will enable NASA to cover the ISS resupply needs until the Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract enters in effect, and thus the E indicates that it actually is an extension above the originally contracted payload transport.
Production and integration of Cygnus spacecraft is 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 and Houston.

Spacecraft

This is the second-to-last of the eleven flights by Northrop Grumman under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA, and it's considered an extension over the originally contracted flights. This will be the seventh flight of the Enhanced sized Cygnus PCM.
In an Orbital ATK tradition, this Cygnus spacecraft was named the S.S. John Young. He was the only person to fly twice on each of three NASA programs which included Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle. John Young died on 5 January 2018 at the age of 87.

Launch and early operations

After Northrop Grumman purchased Orbital ATK in June 2018, the mission was changed from OA-10E to NG-10. 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 15 November 2018 but was twice delayed due to inclement weather and successfully launched on 17 November.
AttemptPlannedResultTurnaroundReasonDecision PointWeather go Notes
115 Nov 2018
4:49:38 AM		Delayed24 hrsWeather14 Nov 2018
11:00 AM		10%Concerns over bad weather.
216 Nov 2018
4:23:55 AM		Delayed24 hrsWeather15 Nov 2018
11:10 AM		45%Continuing concerns of bad weather.
317 Nov 2018
4:01:31 AM		Launch95%Launched successfully

Manifest

Total weight of cargo:.