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.
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Cygnus NG-21: Mission control just alerted the ISS crew to a possible issue with the Cygnus cargo ship: “Just to let you guys know, good comm with Cygnus, we’re going to have solar array deploy in about an hour. The first two burns were not performed by Cygnus, so they’re re-assessing what’s the current state of the burn plan. We’re hoping to still keep Tuesday (for capture by ISS), but we’ll re-assess once we figure out what went wrong with the first two burns.”
Launch scrubbed due to weather: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1819744353784324103
Due to unfavorable weather, we are standing down from today’s launch of @northropgrumman’s NG-21 mission. Next launch opportunity is Sunday, August 4
Edit: Sunday weather is worse, but they’ll still try: https://x.com/Alexphysics13/status/1819744771297914907
Weather forecast for tomorrow is even worse. In case they can’t launch tomorrow, the next opportunity would be on Tuesday due to the need to refresh the late load cargo.
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1819459220015927673
Targeting Saturday, August 3 for Falcon 9’s launch of @northropgrumman’s 21st commercial resupply mission with @NASA to the @space_station. Teams are keeping an eye on weather, which is 50% favorable for liftoff
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters CRS Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA MECO Main Engine Cut-Off ~ MainEngineCutOff podcast NG New Glenn, two/three-stage orbital vehicle by Blue Origin ~ Natural Gas (as opposed to pure methane) ~ Northrop Grumman, aerospace manufacturer
[Thread #51 for this sub, first seen 15th Aug 2024, 05:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Liftoff!
The weather cooperated!
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.
M-vac shutdown, nominal orbital insertion. Payload deploy is scheduled for T+14:35.
Stage 1 landing confirmed!
Weather is lousy, but they’re going to try anyway: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1820098032093876320
One hour until Falcon 9 launches @northropgrumman’s Cygnus spacecraft to the @space_station. Teams continue to monitor weather, which is now 35% favorable for liftoff
NASA webcast is live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhFi-h65kz0
Zachary Luppen (SpaceX) and Courtney Beasley (NASA) are hosting.
Cygnus was successfully berthed to the ISS on 2024-08-06 at 09:33 UTC.
Cygnus deploy confirmed.
