Cygnus Spacecraft Makes Historic Rendezvous With Space Station

An anonymous reader writes "Orbital Sciences Corp's robotic Cygnus spacecraft made history by docking with the International Space Station early Sunday. From the article: 'The robotic Cygnus spacecraft was captured by space station astronauts using the outpost's robotic arm at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) as the two spacecraft sailed over the Indian Ocean. The orbital arrival, which occurred one week later than planned due to a software data glitch, appeared to go flawlessly.'"

Comments

"Cygnus" means "swan" in Latin.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so that everybody here knows, "cygnus" is Latin for "swan". I think that it's a very apt name for this amazing electromechanical device.

Just like swans, this spacecraft is strong and regal. It is proud of who it is. And it is what it wants to be; it does not cater to the whims and desires of others.

And just like swans, this spacecraft is about ruling its domain. While the swan rules the pond and the stream, this spacecraft rules the orbit of the Earth.

Yet again like swans, I doubt that this spacecraft would hesitate for a moment when it comes to destroying a man's genitalia.

If any spacecraft is to have the name Cygnus, I think that this one is very deserving.

Re:"Cygnus" means "swan" in Latin.

[camperdave]

They should have named it Phoenix. Reading from The Fancy Article: "Cygnus spacecraft are designed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere at the end of their missions." It may go up all strong and regal, but it comes back as ashes.

Re:"Cygnus" means "swan" in Latin.

[__aasqbs9791]

If it was supposed to burn up in the atmosphere but instead crashed into a heavily populated city, ruining it for all time, then Congress would be a good name.

How was this historic?

[WindBourne]

This is really not that historic. They were not first private company to their. That was SpaceX. They did not build the unit that docked there. That was thale. The did not build the rocket. That was Russia and other companies of America.

OSC simply assembled other ppl's work and called it theirs, while claiming enough money to pay for it all. IOW, OSC really did not put skin into the game.

So again, nothing historic here.

Re:How was this historic?

[cdrudge]

Something happened. It's now history. Therefor it's historic.

Re:How was this historic?

[WindBourne]

First off, China does not go to the ISS (thankfully).
Secondly, for us to have bases in space and elsewhere, we need MULTIPLE launch systems. That way, when one has issues, then things can still go forward. Right now, the ISS is 100% dependent on Russia. We need for there to be 3 or more multiple human launchers and ideally at least 2 cargo launch systems in the same area. By that, I mean that ESA and Russia service cargo via the Russian ports. America has 2 services on the western berth (and now 3).

BTW, when SpaceX builds their 150-200 tonnes launch system over the next couple of years, we really need to have another complement it. Sadly, the SLS is NOT a good choice.

Huh?

[MBGMorden]

You can tell the government is involved when an operation that happened a week late due to a "software data glitch" went "flawlessly".

Cygnus

[isny]

They were delivering a large red robot with spinning knives for hands.

Historic?

[jlv]

This is historic only in that Orbital Sciences is closest to NASA at heart.

Orbital has a $1.9B deal to provide 8 cargo flights. Each flight carries about 5000kg. Each is one way (no return payload).

SpaceX has a $1.9B deal to provide 12 cargo flights. Each flight carries about 10000kg. Each provides two way payload delivery.

Do the math. One of these makes sense. Unsurprisingly, the one that doesn't is the one that was stuck in orbit for a week.

At least Orbital is a bargain compared to NASA's shuttle-component-derived SLS.

Re:Historic?

[foniksonik]

They both make sense in that there is redundancy. Add the Soyuz with its human transport and escape pod and you've got a pretty good justification for keeping the ISS going. Without all three the ISS becomes a liability rather than an asset.

Re:Historic?

[FullBandwidth]

Think you might want to check (and cite) those numbers again. I think you've confused launch mass with cargo mass. http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/03/03/happy-berth-day - Dragon delivers 2300 lbs (1045 kg) cargo to ISS. http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/Publications/Cygnus_fact.pdf - Cygnus delivers 2000 kg (standard) or 2700 kg (enhanced) to ISS. The vehicles serve two very different purposes upon reentry. Dragon brings back garbage and recoverable cargo, Cygnus just takes out the trash. That's one of the reasons that Cyngus carries a much greater payload to the ISS. So if you are going to do any kind of back-of-the-envelope calculation about which one is a better value for NASA, then you have to include the value of bringing the wanted & unwanted cargo back versus disposal. Your argument reminds me of the old "which is better, Mac or PC" arguments we used to have in the 20th Century. The answer is "two players are always better than one." Now, how can we extend that analogy to SLS ... "which is better, Mac, PC, or IBM/370 running MVS?" Hmm, IBM/370 may still be considered a lightweight compared to SLS... And what exactly do you mean by "stuck in orbit?" A functioning space vehicle that maneuvers and allows another visiting vehicle (Soyuz) to rendezvous, before making its own approach, hardly sounds "stuck."

Re:Historic?

[Teancum]

Note that when the COTS contract proposals were submitted to NASA in the original RfP, the amounts per flight requested by each company was sealed and not disclosed to other participants. In other words, this was a closed bid process, where price was also not the major factor.

Being critical of Orbital because they submitted a higher price bid (still substantially less than the bid that both ATK and Boeing submitted for the same project) than SpaceX is just simply disingenuous and horribly distorting the facts involved.

After the contract runs out for both companies, there certainly is going to be a whole lot more price competition between these companies and it will be interesting to see what subsequent flight costs are going to be for taxpayers in terms of resupplying the ISS. Regardless of what you may think of this kind of money being dumped into these companies, it is much cheaper paying these prices than using a cost-plus contract like United Launch Alliance wanted to use to do the same thing.

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Docking with the International Space Station?

[bjwest]

'The robotic Cygnus spacecraft was captured by space station astronauts using the outpost's robotic arm at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) as the two spacecraft sailed over the Indian Ocean.

So this thing was flying along side the space station and the astronauts snatched it up and stuck it on the docking port. All lewd innuendoes aside, the Cygnus spacecraft didn't do anything other than match orbits. Not that I think matching orbits like that is a trivial ting, but it a hell of a lot easier to do than actually docking. Commercial satellite companies put objects in precision orbits all the time.

Re:Docking with the International Space Station?

[FullBandwidth]

Yes, but for a geosynchronous vehicle to be in its station-kept orbit might be precision of something like 0.05 degrees (http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/station-keeping.html). Cygnus had to hold at 30m and again at 10m distance (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/sets/72157635370456732/show/, slide #11) for go/no-go decisions prior to moving to the docking position. Totally different orders of magnitude.