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PARIS — A Cygnus cargo spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station Sept. 19 after a one-day delay caused by a thruster issue.
The station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm grappled the Northrop Grumman-built Cygnus XL spacecraft at 7:24 a.m. Eastern after the spacecraft arrived its designated capture point near the station. The arm will then berth the module to a port on the station’s Unity module.
Cygnus, launched to the ISS on the NG-23 mission Sept. 14, was scheduled to arrive at the station about 24 hours earlier. However, NASA announced late Sept. 16 it was postponing the spacecraft’s arrival after the main engine on Cygnus shut down prematurely during two burns earlier in the day.
NASA said late Sept. 17 that engineers analyzed data from Cygnus and found that the thruster worked as intended during those burns. The engine shut down prematurely on two non-sequential burns when a “conservative safeguard in the software settings” triggered a warning system and shut down the thruster.
The agency said during its coverage of the rescheduled Cygnus arrival that the revised sequence of maneuvers by the spacecraft to approach the station took place without incident.
“Adapting to and overcoming unforeseen challenges is something we do NASA, and I’m very proud to be a part of this team,” said NASA astronaut Jonny Kim after using Canadarm2 to capture Cygnus.
This is the first flight of a larger version of Cygnus, called Cygnus XL, with a longer pressurized cargo module that can accommodate 33% more payload than the previous version. The spacecraft carried about 5,000 kilograms of cargo and is scheduled to remain at the station until spring.
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