NASA Television will provide live coverage of next week’s mission to resupply the International Space Station. Orbital Cygnus Corp will launch their cargo spacecraft from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport launch Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Friday, July 11 at 1:40 p.m. EDT.
NASA TV will air a full video feed of all launch preparations and along with other footage related to the mission beginning at 12:30 p.m. Actual launch coverage will begin at 1 p.m. on NASA TV/.
Media briefings previewing the mission’s science cargo and a pre-launch status from Wallops will be broadcast on Thursday, July 10 on NASA TV at 4 p.m.
The Cygnus spacecraft will be stocked with 3,000+ pounds of supplies for the station. The cargo will include science experiments to expand the research capabilities of the 40 crew members aboard the orbiting laboratory as well as crew provisions, spare parts and experiment hardware.
Nanosatellites designed to take images of Earth, developed by Planet Labs of San Francisco are among the research investigations headed to the space station aboard Orbital-2. Also on it’s way to the ISS is another satellite-related investigation called TechEdSat-4, built at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. The goal for this is to develop technology that will ultimately allow small samples to return to Earth from the ISS.
A number of student experiments are being sent in association with the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program, which is an initiative of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education and NanoRacks.
This, along with future resupply missions, will ensure ourl capability to deliver crucial science research into orbit, increasing NASA’s ability to conduct new investigations to Earth’s only laboratory in zero gravity.
If Cygnus launches go as scheduled, the spacecraft will arrive at the space station on Tuesday, July 15. Station commander, Steven Swanson of NASA and Flight Engineer, Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency will be on standby to grab the craft with the station’s robotic arm and install it on the Earth-facing port of ISS’s Harmony module.
NASA TV coverage of capture and installation will begin at 6:15 a.m. on July 15. Grapple is scheduled at approximately 7:24 a.m. Coverage of the installation of Cygnus onto Harmony will begin at 9:30 a.m.
For a full update of media activities and more information on the Orbital-2 mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/orbital
For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/nasatv
