NASA’s space station cargo ship named SS Kalpana Chawla
rocketed into orbit
Los Angeles, Oct 5, 2020
NRIpress.club/Ramesh/Agary Singh
On Oct. 02, a space station cargo ship. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus vehicle, named SS Kalpana Chawla rocketed into orbit.
NRI Kalpana Chawla was an American astronaut, engineer, and the first woman of Indian origin to go to space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the spacecraft disintegrated during its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere
First and foremost, NG-14 was tasked with delivering a host of pressurized cargo including science experiments, crew supplies, general maintenance equipment, and personal items to the Station.
The only remaining operational U.S. vehicle that does not dock to the International Space Station but rather berths, Cygnus approached the outpost after a 2 day rendezvous.
When arriving, Cygnus approached to within 10 meters below the International Space Station, during which NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner operated the Station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, to reach out and grapple Cygnus and then physically berth it to a port on the Unity (Node-1) module.
Once secured, crew members will take photographs of the vehicle to document its arrival condition before opening the hatches and beginning the process of removing the newly delivered cargo
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