The engineers controlled the space station’s 58 foot robotic arm as it pulled the Cygnus aircraft away from a berthing port on the outpost’s Harmony module at 5:14 am. The spaceship was then maneuvered to the release point about 30 feet below the complex. At the end of it’s one month stay at the International Space Station, a commercial Cygnus supply ship owned by Orbital Sciences Corp left the complex on Friday. The spaceship is scheduled for re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere over the un-inhabited South Pacific. The cargo ship is designed to burn and disintegrate during re-entry as it disposes of unneeded items and trash inside.
The mission known as Orb-2 launched July 13 aboard on Antares rocket from Wallips Island, Va. The spaceship completed a rendezvous with the space station on July 16, loaded with nearly 3,300 pounds of equipment, experiments and food when it was captured by the robot arm of the space station. The mission is part of a $1.9 billion deal between NASA and Orbital for at least eight cargo deliveries through 2016. The re-entry is scheduled in such a way that the astronauts in the ISS can view it, because it will be an exercise for the fall of Europe’s ATV early next year and eventually the International Space Station once it completes its mission. A controlled re-entry of such a large vehicle has never been attempted before. The ISS is about the size of a football field and weighs nearly one million pounds.
Deborah Campbell
