Cygnus NG-12


Cygnus NG-12, previously known as CRS OA-12, was the thirteenth flight of the Northrop Grumman robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its twelfth flight to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. The mission launched on 2 November 2019 at 9:59 AM. This was the first launch of Cygnus under the CRS-2 contract.
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.

History

Cygnus NG-12 was the first mission under the Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract and launched 2 November 2019 at 13:59:47 UTC.

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 at Dulles and Houston. This is the eighth flight of the Enhanced-sized Cygnus PCM.
In 2019 the spacecraft was named the S.S. Alan Bean.

Manifest

Total weight of cargo:, consisting of in pressurized cargo and in unpressurized cargo.
Among the cargo delivered was a special made oven for use in space, and some cookie dough. The crew of ISS will attempt to use the device to bake chocolate chip cookies in space. The baking of cookies in space attracted some international media attention when the mission was arriving at the space station.
NG 12 tested the Cygnus External Payload Carrier which is used to deliver external payloads to the station or remove degraded ones. SOLAR and the SDS were the first payloads transferred to the spacecraft for disposal.

Extension

Northrop Grumman’s customer with a payload on the Cygnus sought extra time in orbit, a request that the Federal Communications Commission approved on March 3. The FCC approval provided the potential to extend this testing until as late as April 2.
“The extension of our license by the FCC allows Northrop Grumman to extend our NG-12 mission beyond our original completion date, enabling us to offer increased operational flexibility for our customers,” Frank DeMauro, vice president and general manager of Tactical Space at Northrop Grumman, said in the statement. “The NG-12 spacecraft remains in excellent health as we carry out a few more weeks of in-orbit operations.”
The spacecraft was deorbited at about 23:00 UTC on March 17, 2020.