A robotic cargo ship will depart from the space station on Friday (Dec. 22), and you possibly can watch the motion without cost.
Northrop Grumman’s uncrewed Cygnus NG-19 spacecraft should undock from the International Space Station (ISS) at 8:05 a.m. EST (1305 GMT) on Friday. You possibly can watch coverage here at Space.com, via NASA Television, starting at 7:45 a.m. EST (1245 GMT).
Cygnus has spent 4.5 months on the orbiting complex, following an Aug. 4 arrival that brought up 8,200 kilos (3,800 kilograms) of hardware, supplies, science, industrial products and other cargo, NASA officials said in a Wednesday (Dec. 20) release.
NG-19, the nineteenth industrial resupply mission from Northrop Grumman, launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Aug. 1. It was named after Laurel Clark, a NASA astronaut who died (with six other astronauts) through the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003. NG-19 was also the last mission to launch on a version of Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket that used a primary stage inbuilt Ukraine.
The spacecraft is now docked to the U.S. Unity module on the ISS’ Earth-facing port. To detach it, flight controllers on the bottom will instruct the robotic Canadarm2 to conduct the procedure, after which move the freighter for release. NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara “will monitor Cygnus’ systems upon its departure from the space station,” NASA officials wrote in the discharge.
Cygnus’ exact date to return to Earth has not been released. The spacecraft will perform undisclosed “secondary payload operations” before it’s commanded in early January to plunge into Earth’s atmosphere, where it can burn up with trash on board.
The opposite industrial cargo craft currently lively for NASA, SpaceX‘s Dragon capsule, can bring science back to Earth, because it is designed to survive the fiery trip through our planet’s atmosphere and splash down within the ocean.