On the 19th anniversary of the arrival of the first crew to live aboard the International Space Station, a Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply spacecraft is on its way to the orbiting outpost with almost 8,200 pounds of science investigations and cargo after launching at 9:59 a.m. EDT Saturday from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
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On the anniversary of the arrival of the first crew members to live aboard the International Space Station, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus resupply spacecraft is on its way to the station with nearly 8,200 pounds of science investigations and cargo after launching at 9:59 a.m. EDT Saturday, Nov. 2 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. At the time of lift off, the International Space Station was traveling over the south Atlantic southwest of Cape Town, South Africa, at an altitude of 257 statute miles.
The spacecraft launched on an Antares 230+ rocket from the Virginia Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s Pad 0A at Wallops. Automated command to initiate solar array deploy will begin about 2 hours and 53 minutes after launch (about 12:53 p.m.). Solar array deployment will take about 30 minutes. Confirmation of solar deployment will be shared on the launch blog and social media at @NASA_Wallops and @space_station.
Cygnus is scheduled to arrive at the orbiting laboratory around 4:10 a.m. Monday, Nov. 4. Coverage of the spacecraft’s approach and arrival will begin at 2:45 a.m. on NASA Television and the agency’s website. Expedition 61 astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch of NASA will use the space station’s robotic arm to capture Cygnus, while NASA’s Andrew Morgan monitors telemetry. The spacecraft is scheduled to stay at the space station until January.
The Cygnus spacecraft for this space station resupply mission is named in honor of NASA astronaut Alan Bean. The late Apollo 12 astronaut flew to the Moon on Apollo 12 and became the fourth human to walk on the lunar surface. This is Northrop Grumman’s 12th cargo flight to the space station, and the first under its Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract with NASA, will support dozens of new and existing investigations.
Follow the Cygnus spacecraft’s arrival to the orbiting laboratory on the space station blog and by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as theISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Mark Garcia
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NASA coverage of the scheduled launch at 9:59 a.m. EDT of Northrop Grumman’s 12th mission to resupply the International Space Station is underway on NASA TV and the agency’s website. The company’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft will lift off on an Antares rocket from Virginia Space’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft is loaded with around 8,200 pounds of science and research, crew supplies, and hardware for the orbiting laboratory.
The spacecraft, dubbed the SS Alan Bean, is named after the late Apollo and Skylab astronaut who died on May 26, 2018, at the age of 86. This Cygnus will launch 50 years to the month after Bean, Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon flew to the Moon on NASA’s Apollo 12 mission, during which Bean became the fourth human to walk on the lunar surface. Bean was the lunar module pilot aboard Intrepid with mission commander Conrad when they landed on Moon at the Ocean of Storms on Nov. 19, 1969.
Follow launch activities at the launch blog and @NASA_Wallops and learn more about space station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Mark Garcia
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A U.S. cargo craft is poised to resupply the International Space Station just days after a Japanese space freighter departed the orbiting lab Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, the Expedition 61 crew today continued an array of microgravity research and spacewalk preparations.
Flight Engineer Christina Koch with back-up support from NASA astronaut Jessica Meir used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to release Japan’s HTV-8 cargo spacecraft at 1:21 p.m. EDT today. The cargo craft spent five weeks attached to the orbiting lab following a Sept. 24 launch from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan.
HTV-8 delivered some five tons of supplies and experiments to the orbital complex as well as new lithium-ion batteries. The batteries were installed in the electronics system of the far port truss of the complex replacing older nickel-hydrogen batteries and upgrading the station’s power supply.
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus resupply ship sits atop an Antares rocket loaded with 8,200 pounds of science experiments and station hardware. Liftoff will take place on Saturday at 9:59 a.m. EDT from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Meir and Koch will be in the cupola Monday morning awaiting the arrival of Cygnus. Meir will command the Canadarm2 to reach out and grapple Cygnus at 4:10 a.m. EST. Koch will back up Meir as astronaut Andrew Morgan of NASA monitors Cygnus’ approach and rendezvous.
Morgan and Commander Luca Parmitano of ESA (European Space Agency) are also getting up to speed with repair techniques for an external cosmic particle detector. The duo is reviewing procedures to replace the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer’s (AMS) thermal control system during a series of spacewalks tentatively planned for this month. The AMS measures the charge, velocity and mass of cosmic rays in its search for evidence of dark matter and anti-matter.
Morgan also watered plants and set up biology hardware that will house rodents shipped aboard Cygnus. Parmitano monitored the free-flying Astrobee robotic assistant testing its autonomous ability to perform tasks inside the space station’s Kibo laboratory module.
Cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Skripochka focused on Russian spacecraft work and science in their segment of the space station. The duo charged Soyuz crew ship batteries and packed a Progress cargo craft. Skvortsov then studied how pain adjusts to microgravity while Skripochka moved on to plumbing tasks.
Mark Garcia
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The early decisions here in Sharm El-Sheikh were only possible because of countless hours of work conducted within the ITU Radiocommunication Sector and the six regional telecommunications organizations (RTOs) since the previous WRC in 2015. Three of these decisions were on issues of interest to the IARU.
The band 47.0-47.2 GHz was allocated solely to the amateur and amateur-satellite services by the 1979 World Administrative Radio Conference. Commercial wireless broadband interests had expressed some interest in the band being designated for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) and there was some concern that such a proposal might be made at WRC-19. The fact that none was forthcoming was due in part to the work of the IARU at the Conference Preparatory Meeting earlier this year and in the RTOs. The WRC has agreed to “no change” (NOC) at 47.0-47.2 GHz.
Another NOC decision that avoided impact on the amateur service applies to the band 5850-5925 MHz, which is an amateur secondary allocation in Region 2. Consideration of proposals involving other parts of spectrum in the 5-GHz range will take much longer.
Finally, the WRC has agreed to make no frequency allocations or other changes to the Radio Regulations to accommodate Wireless Power Transmission for electric vehicles (WPT-EV). Much more work remains to be done on an urgent basis in the ITU and other standards organizations if radiocommunication services are to be adequately protected from harmful interference that may be generated by WPT-EV, both at the fundamental frequency and from unwanted emissions.
One of the most difficult issues facing WRC-19 is to develop an agenda for WRC-23. There are dozens of proposals for agenda items and they cannot all be accommodated within available ITU resources. The substantive work of considering these proposals began on Friday afternoon and must be completed over the next two weeks.
Some meetings on the more difficult issues are scheduled for Saturday, November 2. Delegates have been warned to expect more intensive use of weekend and evening hours as the conference proceeds toward its conclusion on November 22.
Source IARU http://iaru.org/
CEPT ECC report on WRC-19 Week 1
https://www.cept.org/ecc/groups/ecc/cpg/client/introduction/weekly-report-from-wrc-19
For daily updates see the RSGB WRC-19 Blog
https://rsgb.org/main/blog/category/news/special-focus/wrc-19/
Get The Details…
m5aka AMSAT-UK
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Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, November 1, 2019 – Week 1 of the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference saw agreement reached on several issues on which discussions prior to the conference had revealed consensus. Those were the easy ones; the rest will be more difficult.
Consideration of a 50 MHz allocation in Region 1 to harmonize the allocations in the three Regions was the subject of spirited debate in a Sub Working Group chaired by Dale Hughes, VK1DSH, of the Australian delegation. The four RTOs in Region 1 made disparate proposals to the conference and a small group of administrations proposed NOC. For three days there was no progress toward a consensus solution but that changed on Friday morning. An agreement has been reached, subject to confirmation by the regional groups, that will provide administrations in Region 1 with flexibility in how to accommodate their amateurs.