Northrop Grumman Targeting Feb. 9 for Launch of Cygnus Spacecraft to International Space Station
By Space Coast Daily // January 25, 2020
Northrop Grumman’s 13th commercial resupply mission to the to International Space Station
WALLOPS ISLAND, VIRGINIA – Northrop Grumman is targeting Sunday, Feb. 9, at 5:39 p.m., for the launch of its Cygnus spacecraft on an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.
This will be Northrop Grumman’s 13th commercial resupply mission for the agency to the International Space Station.
The Cygnus spacecraft will carry crew supplies, scientific research and hardware to the orbiting laboratory to support the Expedition 61 and 62 crews for the 13th mission under Northrop Grumman’s Commercial Resupply Services-2 contract with NASA.
The Cygnus spacecraft is an expendable American automated cargo spacecraft developed by Orbital Sciences and now built and launched by Northrop Grumman as part of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) developmental program.
Wallops Flight Facility, located on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, is operated by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, primarily as a rocket launch site to support science and exploration missions for NASA and other Federal agencies.
There have been over 16,000 launches from the rocket testing range at Wallops since its founding in 1945 in the quest for information on the flight characteristics of airplanes, launch vehicles, and spacecraft, and to increase the knowledge of the Earth’s upper atmosphere and the environment of outer space.
The launch vehicles vary in size and power from the small Super Loki meteorological rockets to orbital-class vehicles.
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