Mission Highlight: CRS NG-24
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft is targeting Wednesday, April 8, at 8:49 a.m. EST for liftoff on a Falcon 9 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Northrop Grumman-24 (NG-24) mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services program, which relies on commercial partners to deliver cargo — food, science experiments, and equipment — to the International Space Station (ISS). The booster will land on the droneship Just Read the Instructions. Unlike SpaceX’s Dragon, which docks autonomously, Cygnus relies on astronauts aboard the station to capture it using the Canadarm2 robotic arm before ground controllers dock it to the Unity module for unloading. When the mission is complete in October, Cygnus will depart loaded with trash and burn up during reentry.
Packed into the Cygnus XL are more than 11,000 pounds of supplies and research hardware for the station’s Expedition 73 crew. The science payload includes an upgrade to NASA’s Cold Atom Lab — a facility that chills atoms to study quantum behavior, with potential applications in computing and dark matter research — along with equipment for boosting the production of therapeutic stem cells for blood and cancer treatments. The mission also carries model organisms to help researchers study how spaceflight affects the gut, and hardware to improve the space weather monitoring tools that keep satellites running reliably.
Other missions this week
On Monday, April 6, SpaceX opens the week with the Starlink Group 17-35 mission, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base at 10:49 p.m. EST. The Falcon 9 booster is expected to land on the droneship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean. The satellites will join SpaceX’s ever-growing broadband constellation in low Earth orbit.
Tomorrow morning, Tuesday, April 7, a Minotaur IV rocket operated by Northrop Grumman lifts off from Vandenberg at 7:30 a.m. EST carrying the STPSat-7 payload for the U.S. Space Test Program mission STP-S29A, which flies experimental and developmental payloads for the Department of Defense. Also on Tuesday, April 7, The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) is targeting 9:30 a.m. EST for a Long March 8 launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Site near Wenchang, China, carrying an undisclosed payload, as reported by NextSpaceflight.com.
On Wednesday, April 8, CASC follows up with a Long March 6A lifting off from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi province at 3:35 p.m. EST, also carrying an unknown payload, per NextSpaceflight.com.
On Friday, April 10, Chinarocket’s Jielong 3 — a small commercial solid-fueled rocket — launches from the Haiyang Oriental Spaceport in Shandong Province, a sea-based launch platform, at 7:00 a.m. EST, per NextSpaceflight.com. That evening, SpaceX closes out the week with the Starlink Group 17-21 mission from Vandenberg at 10:39 p.m. EST, with the booster targeting a landing on Of Course I Still Love You.
Last week’s recap
Last week was headlined by the long-awaited launch of NASA’s Artemis 2 on April 1 — the first crewed mission to fly the Space Launch System, and the first time humans have been to the Moon since 1972. The four-person crew — Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen — lifted off at 6:35 p.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center aboard the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity.
Much has happened since: the crew has completed a successful translunar injection burn, snapped stunning views of Earth and the lunar farside, and as of today is performing their lunar flyby. Closest approach to the Moon is this evening, and the crew is expected to splashdown off the coast of San Diego on Friday, April 10, at 8:07 p.m. EDT. Follow all of Astronomy‘s ongoing coverage here.
The week also featured two SpaceX Starlink missions: Group 10-44 launched from Cape Canaveral on March 30, and Group 10-58 followed on April 2. ULA orbited the fifth batch of Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband satellites on an Atlas V 551 from Cape Canaveral on April 4. Roscosmos launched a Meridian-M military communications satellite from Plesetsk on April 3. China’s Space Pioneer conducted a demo flight of its Tianlong 3 rocket from Jiuquan, and CAS Space flew a prototype of its Qingzhou spacecraft on a Kinetica 2 from the same site on March 30.
Looking ahead
Next week brings another SpaceX Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral on April 13. On April 14, Blue Origin’s New Glenn carries AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 7 to low Earth orbit — the latest satellite in the company’s effort to beam broadband directly to ordinary smartphones from space. A second Starlink run (Group 17-27) is also slated for April 14 from Vandenberg.
