One of the solar panels of the device did not open.
=”The Cygnus spacecraft docked with the ISS, despite the breakdown” />
The Cygnus cargo spacecraft, which was launched by the Antares launch vehicle on November 7, successfully docked with the International Space Station. This happened despite the fact that the ship had been in space for two days with only one functioning solar panel, reports CNN.
A few hours after the ship reached orbit and separated from the launch vehicle, one of solar panels of the device did not open. Teams on Earth tried to fix the problem, forced the panel to open, but they did not succeed.
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NASA and Northrop Grumman , which built the Cygnus capsule, decided to abandon attempts to deploy the panel and focus on docking with the ISS. They noted that the spacecraft had enough power to make the approach.
“The Cygnus team is collecting information on why the second panel did not deploy as planned,” NASA said in a statement.
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Despite everything, the docking of the ship with the station was successful. In order for this to happen, NASA astronaut Nicole Mann used the robotic arm of the ISS to fix the ship and pull it to the docking port. consists of two stages. The main structure of the first stage was developed by KB Yuzhnoye and manufactured by SE PO YMZ in cooperation with Ukrainian enterprises Hartron-ARKOS (Kharkiv), Kyivpribor (Kyiv), Hartron-YUKOM (Zaporozhye), LLC CHESARA TELEMETRY “, “RAPID” (Chernihiv) and others ordered by the Northrop Grumman corporation (USA).
