The debut mission of Northrop Grumman’s new jumbo cargo spacecraft didn’t go off without a hitch.
The company’s first “Cygnus XL” freighter suffered a thruster issue in orbit early Tuesday morning (Sept. 16), two days after launching toward the International Space Station (ISS) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
As a result, “the Cygnus XL will not arrive to the space station on Wednesday, Sept. 17, as originally planned, with a new arrival date and time under review,” NASA officials announced in an update on Tuesday afternoon.
The Cygnus XL’s “main engine stopped earlier than planned during two burns designed to raise the orbit of the spacecraft for rendezvous with the space station, where it will deliver 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory for NASA,” agency officials added in the update. “All other Cygnus XL systems are performing normally.”
Cygnus XL is the latest version of Virginia-based Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus freighter. Previous iterations hauled about 8,500 pounds (3,856 kg) to the ISS.
The current mission is known as NG-23, because it was supposed to be the 23rd cargo effort that Northrop Grumman flies to the ISS for NASA. But the 22nd was canceled after the Cygnus was damaged during transport to the launch site.
Cygnus is one of three freighters that resupply the ISS, along with SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Russia’s Progress vehicle.
Cygnus and Progress are expendable, while Dragon is reusable. The NG-23 Cygnus XL — named S.S. William “Willie” McCool, after one of the astronauts who died in the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster — is slated to stay attached to the ISS until March 2026, when it will depart to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
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