New Yorkers had been handled to a dramatic present over their metropolis’s well-known skyline on Monday morning (Nov. 7) — in the event that they obtained up early sufficient.
The fireworks got here courtesy of Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which launched the company’s robotic Cygnus cargo spacecraft towards the Worldwide House Station (ISS) from Virginia at 5:32 a.m. EST (1032 GMT).
The launch was seen from a large swath of the U.S. East Coast — together with from Gutenberg, New Jersey, the place skywatcher Alexander Krivenyshev captured a number of beautiful photographs of the rocket above New York Metropolis.
“Those that wakened at 5:35 a.m. had been handled to a spectacular present lasting 30-40 seconds, with an incredible spiral vapor path from a separated booster rocket seen above New York Metropolis this morning,” Krivenyshev, the president of WorldTimeZone.com, wrote in an e-mail to House.com.
Associated: Facts about Cygnus, Northrop Grumman’s cargo spacecraft
The Cygnus automobile — which Northrop Grumman named after Sally Ride, the primary American lady to succeed in space — is carrying about 4.1 tons (3.7 metric tons) of scientific experiments and provides to the ISS.
The freighter will arrive on the orbiting lab on Wednesday (Nov. 9), if all goes in line with plan. And there was a hiccup already: As of Monday night, solely certainly one of Cygnus’ two solar arrays had deployed properly.
Northrop Grumman is troubleshooting the issue and has expressed confidence that the SS Sally Trip can meet up with the orbiting lab even when the second solar array by no means unfurls, NASA officers said in a blog post (opens in new tab) on Monday.
Cygnus is not the one robotic freighter that carries cargo as much as the space station; Russia’s Progress automobile and SpaceX’s Dragon capsule accomplish that as effectively.
Dragon is a reusable spacecraft that comes again to Earth safely for tender, parachute-aided ocean splashdowns. Progress and Cygnus, in contrast, are expendable, burning up in our planet’s ambiance on the finish of their missions.
Mike Wall is the creator of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a ebook concerning the seek for alien life. Comply with him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).
