Tuesday, January 30, will be the first ever flight of a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo capsule on a SpaceX Falcon 9. The mission, called NG-20 is set for NET Tuesday, January 30, at 12:07 PM EST.
You'll probably remember that we've talked about this before, and the earliest post appears to be August of '22, so almost 1-1/2 years, saying Northrop Grumman contracted with SpaceX for three launches. The issue was that the Antares rocket normally used to launch Cygnus was becoming non-procurable and the successor version of Antares wouldn't be available in time. I won't repeat all the details in that article, but it explains the details of what forced them to rely on SpaceX while they wait for the next version of the Antares rocket being built for Northrop Grumman by yet another competitor, Firefly Aerospace.
As we've talked about before, it didn't seem that this would be seamless and a Cygnus would just mount on top of a Falcon 9 like the Cargo Dragon capsule does. Modifications were required.
During a pre-flight teleconference on Friday (Jan. 26), William Gerstenmaier, vice president of Build and Flight Reliability at SpaceX, said that the Falcon 9's payload fairing, the shell that surrounds and protects a spacecraft during ascent while atop a rocket, had to be modified to add a hatch measuring 5 feet by 4 feet (1.5m by 1.2m). The hatch gives ground crews the ability to add extra "late-load" cargo before launch including special treats like ice cream for the astronauts aboard the space station, Gerstenmaier said.
Gerstenmaier added that the complication of addition of the hatch contributed to the decision to delay the launch one day to Jan. 30. That's because the area inside that hatch must be environmentally controlled, since any contamination on Cygnus's docking hardware could affect how well it berths at the ISS.
"So that's a pretty intense activity," Gerstenmaier said. "This will be the first time we've done that. It's taken a lot of modifications on our part to get this hardware ready to go fly."
Gee, it was so complicated it delayed the launch ONE day? All so the ISS crew could get "special treats like ice cream." I'm kidding. I suspect changing upper end of the F9's upper stage was more involved and Gerstenmaier is talking about a minor part of the changes.
A Northrop Grumman Cygnus freighter spacecraft in between two halves of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket payload fairing. (Image credit: NASA/Kennedy Space Center)
Our weather is looking pretty close to perfect for a launch at noon on Tuesday. Booster 1077 will be flying for the 10th time and will return to the Cape to land. Those Return To Launch Site (RTLS) landings usually add some neat sights and sometimes even neat sounds.
SpaceX - Major design modification causes delay of one day.
ReplyDeleteEveryone Else - Minor design modification causes years delay and costs taxpayers another billion or so.
'Everyone Else' is how most military procurement works as well. Slow and expensive.
DeleteIs "everyone else" a cost plus deal? That would explain it...
DeleteA lot of military procurement issues are related to bloat caused by Congress or by military procurement officers trying to set up cushy retirement jobs or bank accounts.
DeleteSo now ISS is getting the equivalent of what Shuttle middeck used to provide "back in the day!" In a limited amount. One suspects they would have no way of loading anything the size of CFES in Cygnus nor Dragon.
ReplyDeleteTo be complete, I don't believe anyone has ever suggested otherwise. No one I'm aware of has ever said Cygnus or Dragon could deliver the same amounts or more than the Shuttles could. No one said they were anything other than a way of getting some stuff back and forth between ISS and ground.
DeleteSiG, if something fits within F9's fairing, all they have to do is modify the spacecraft buss (the ring that you see when the satellites get separated) so that Cygnus will fit onto the F9. The door mod is really trivial if there's nothing in the way of the space where the door will be.
ReplyDeleteI highly suspect that SpaceX had already considered launching the Cygnus eventually and had preplanned most if not all of the modifications necessary. Just sayin'. They're sneaky like that.