The piston on the space station. Today we docked at the fifth ship ... - Gazeta Wyborcza

Space Station and five ships berthed at the (Photo: NASA)

Cygnus is an unmanned, carries supplies. Merged with the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday after hours. 13 of our time. It’s his first arrival to the station. At this time, the space station docked until five ships – apart from Cygnus are: the European ATV-provider, the Russian manned Sojuzy (two) and the Progress cargo.

NASA in 2006 came to the conclusion that the provision of supplies to the International Space Station has become a routine activity and prevents it from exploring the far corners of the universe.

Agency has decided to give the role of space as supplies to private companies. She started the competition. The race for contracts billions of dollars stood the two companies. First, founded by Elon Musk SpaceX has proposed a system based on the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. In December 2010 she became the first private company ever to enter the orbit of the spacecraft and bring it back to Earth. The second start was to end docking to the ISS – the company failed to do so in June 2012.

Today, your big day is the second company that won the contract – Orbital Sciences Corporation. After a successful test flight Antares rocket that was to orbit the ship Cygnus, on Wednesday of last week started a mission whose purpose was to have a connection to the ISS.

At a press conference before the start of commercial operations program manager Alan Lindenmoyer NASA said: – Before Cygnus ISS approach to perform a series of test maneuvers. We test trial interrupt approach, course correction, etc.. On this basis, we will take a closer agreement Cygnus to the station and optional docking. The ship is capable of delivering about 700 kg load. We put on the ISS crew needed clothes, food and some office supplies.

It turned out that at first it did not go smoothly. Due to a bug in the software Cygnus could not perform the approach to the station on time. GPS positioning failed. Service failed to rectify the fault, but the approach had to be postponed.

docked successfully just now – on Sunday. As was previously planned, the ship made a first test approach also tested emergency interrupt the procedure and finally a few minutes after the hour. 13 our time Cygnus successfully docked to the target. The crew of the station can no longer pick up a fresh supply of Cygnus their stuff.