Time for the second of three of Cygnus launches on Falcon 9!
Due to the retirement of the Antares 230+ rocket, Northrop Grumman purchased three missions from SpaceX to launch the Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station before the Antares 330 rocket enters operation and fulfill the CRS Phase 2 contract manifest. (NextSpaceflight)
| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-08-04, 15:02 |
|---|---|
| Scheduled for (local) | 2024-08-04, 11:02 (EDT) |
| Mission | CRS NG-21 |
| Launch site | SLC-40, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA. |
| Booster | B1080-10 |
| Landing | LZ-1 |
| Payload spacecraft | Cygnus |
| Customer | Northrop Grumman / NASA |
| Mission success criteria | Successful launch and docking to the ISS |
Webcasts
| Stream | Link |
|---|---|
| Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Aw8GziHrCQ |
| NASA | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhFi-h65kz0 |
| NASASpaceflight | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYjuWuVdTl4 |
| Spaceflight Now | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-nvTp0Ia0I (scrub) |
| The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRcESGxNIUs |
| SpaceX | https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1820108783718445462 |
| The Space Devs | TBD |
Stats
Sourced from NextSpaceflight and r/SpaceX:
☑️ 36th launch from SLC-40 this year
☑️ 7 days, 9:53:00 turnaround for this pad
☑️ 42nd landing on LZ-1
☑️ 336th Falcon Family Booster landing, 346th Falcon recovery attempt
☑️ 6th consecutive successful Falcon 9 launch (if successful)
☑️ 75th Falcon 9 mission this year, 361st Falcon 9 mission overall
☑️ 76th SpaceX mission of 2024, 377th mission overall (excluding Starship flights)
☑️ 78th SpaceX launch this year, 390th SpaceX launch overall (including Starship flights)
Mission info
Cygnus NG-21 (Northrop Grumman-21) is a cargo resupply mission of the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA.
Northrop Grumman and NASA jointly developed a new space transportation system to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. The Cygnus cargo ship consists of two parts, a service module built in the USA based on the GEOStar platform, and a pressurized module, manufactured in France and Italy by Thales Alenia.
MECO, stage separation, M-vac ignition, stage 1 boostback burn, and fairing separation.
Edit: Interesting to note that they’re using a “stubby” M-vac version with a shorter nozzle.