Cygnus NG-13


Cygnus NG-13, previously known as CRS OA-13, was the fourteenth flight of the Northrop Grumman robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its thirteenth flight to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. The mission launched on 15 February 2020 at 20:21:01 UTC after nearly a week of delays. This is the second 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, with Ukrainian specialists providing first stage structure.
Cygnus, an advanced maneuvered spacecraft, mates a Pressurized Cargo Module, provided by Orbital's industrial partner Thales Alenia Space, with their GEOStar satellite bus. Northrop Grumman purchased Orbital in June 2018; its ATK division was renamed Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems.

History

Cygnus NG-13 is the second Cygnus mission under the Commercial Resupply Services-2.
Production and integration of Cygnus spacecraft are 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.
The original launch attempt on 9 February 2020 was scheduled to launch at 22:39:30 UTC before being pushed to the end of its five-minute window at 22:44:29 UTC, only to end up being scrubbed due to a technical issue with a regulator at the launch pad with three minutes left in the countdown.
The second launch attempt on 14 February 2020 at 20:43:34 UTC was scrubbed due to strong upper winds with less than ninety minutes left in the countdown.
Cygnus NG-13 launched successfully on 15 February 2020 at 20:21:01 UTC.

Launch and early operations

After Northrop Grumman purchased Orbital ATK in June 2018, the mission was changed from OA-13 to NG-13. 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 9 February 2020 but was scrubbed and delayed due to inclement weather and an issue with a regulator at the launch pad. The mission launched successfully on the 15 February 2020 at 20:21:01 UTC with no delay and no apparent problems. The Cygnus spacecraft arrived at the space station on 18 February 2020 at 09:05 UTC. Expedition 62 astronaut Andrew Morgan grappled the spacecraft using the station's robotic arm. After Cygnus capture, ground controllers commanded the station's arm to rotate and install Cygnus on the Earth-facing port of the station's Unity module at 11:16 UTC. The Cygnus spacecraft remained at the space station until 11 May 2020. The Saffire-IV experiment was conducted within Cygnus after it departs the station, and prior to deorbit, when it disposed of several tons of trash during reentry into Earth's atmosphere, over the Pacific Ocean, on 29 May 2020.
AttemptPlanned
ResultTurnaroundReasonDecision PointWeather go Notes
19 Feb 2020
22:44:29		Scrubbed95 hrsGround9 Feb 2020
22:41		100%Scrubbed due to off-nominal data from ground support with less than three minutes in the count down.
213 Feb 2020
21:06:03		Delayed24 hrsWeather11 Feb 2020
16:50		45%Continuing concerns of bad weather.
314 Feb 2020
20:43:34		Scrubbed24 hrsWeather14 Feb 2020
19:07		90%Concerns of higher upper-level winds.
415 Feb 2020
20:21:01		Successful85%Launched successfully on time.

Spacecraft

This is the eighth flight of the Enhanced-sized Cygnus PCM.
This Cygnus spacecraft is named to honor Robert H. Lawrence.

Manifest

The Cygnus spacecraft is loaded with :
NASA provided the following breakdown of the cargo's hardware for ISS:
The new experiments arriving at the orbiting laboratory will challenge and inspire future scientists and explorers, and provide valuable insight for researchers. Experiments will test new facilities for microscopic viewing and cell culturing, and particle identification will seek to better understand how fire spreads in microgravity and will study how bacteriophages behave in space. The Saffire-IV experiment will occur after Cygnus leaves the ISS.
Cubesats planned for release: Red-Eye 2, DeMI, TechEdSat 10. A CubeSat payload for the communications provider Lynk was ejected from the Slingshot deployer on Cygnus on 13 May 2020 at 23:25 UTC. Another payload remained attached to Cygnus and deployed a communications antenna. The payloads were launched aboard Dragon CRS-20 and installed on the Cygnus hatch by the ISS crew. The Cygnus host a NASA combustion experiment inside its pressurized cabin before Northrop Grumman controllers command the spacecraft to a destructive re-entry over the South Pacific Ocean on 29 May 2020.

Disposal

NG 13 is another test of the Cygnus External Payload Carrier. Europe's HDEV experiment which has provided views with outstanding views of the earth would return home on NG 13.