These photographs span activities in March as the news media got an up-close viewing of the Orbital ATK commercial Cygnus cargo ship, its placement aboard a mobile transporter and delivery of the craft to the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket assembly building for hoisting and mating. Liftoff is scheduled for April 18.
A balky interplanetary seismic instrument that ran into technical problems in 2015, forcing a two-year delay in the launch of NASA’s InSight lander to Mars, cleared a major test last week after engineers redesigned part of the sensor package, boosting confidence that the mission will be ready to blast off in May 2018.
The head of the launch enterprise directorate at the U.S. Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center, Claire Leon, spoke with reporters March 15 about the military’s award of a GPS launch contract to SpaceX, and she discussed plans for more head-to-head launch contract competitions in the coming months.
NASA is gearing up for an intense few weeks of work aboard the International Space Station, staging three spacewalks, moving a docking port from one module to another to support commercial crew ferry ships and capturing an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship carrying nearly 4 tons of equipment and supplies.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, flying in its basic two-stage configuration with no strap-on solids, was stacked aboard a mobile launch platform at Cape Canaveral’s Vertical Integration Facility on Feb. 22 and 23 in preparation to send Orbital ATK’s S.S. John Glenn cargo ship into orbit for the International Space Station.
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