Cygnus NG-11


Cygnus NG-11, previously known as CRS OA-11, is the twelfth flight of the Northrop Grumman robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its eleventh flight to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. The mission launched on 17 April 2019 at 4:46 PM EST UTC. This is the last mission from the extended CRS1 contract; follow-up missions are part of the CRS2 contract. NG-11 was also the first mission to load critical hardware onto Cygnus within the last 24 hours prior to launch, a new Antares feature.
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; its ATK division was renamed Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems.
Concurrently, Nepalese satellite NepaliSat-1 and Sri Lankan satellite Raavana 1 were launched as part of Cygnus NG-11 as deployable payloads.

History

Cygnus NG-11 is part of an extension program that enables NASA to cover the ISS resupply needs until the Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract enters in effect. The mission launched at 4:46:07 PM from Wallops Island, VA.

Spacecraft

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. This will be the eighth flight of the Enhanced-sized Cygnus PCM.
The spacecraft for the NG-11 is named the S.S. Roger Chaffee after Roger Chaffee who lost his life during training for the Apollo 1 mission. On 17 April 2019 at 20:46 UTC, Antares launched the NG-11 mission to the International Space Station from Wallops Island, Virginia.

Manifest

Total weight of cargo:, consisting of in pressurized cargo and in unpressurized cargo.
Smallsats deployed during NG-11: