Status
Success
Rocket
Mission Details
Cygnus OA-8E
Cygnus OA-8E (Orbital ATK-8E) is a cargo resupply mission of the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA.
Northrop Grumman (formerly Orbital ATK) and NASA jointly developed a new space transportation system to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. The Cygnus cargo ship consists of two parts, a service module built in the USA based on the GEOStar platform, and a pressurized module, manufactured in France and Italy by Thales Alenia. The cargo is sent into orbit by a launcher specially developed for this purpose.
Antares has a first stage based on Energiya lateral blocks, made in Ukraine by Yuzhnoye. It was initially powered by two NK-33s, built in the 1960s for the Soviet N1 lunar launcher, before being replaced by RD-181s, derived from the RD-170s installed on Energiya and Zenit. The second stage, a Castor-30, is made in the USA, by Northrop Grumman.
CRS OA-8E was captured by RMS on 14/11/2017 at 10:04 UTC and berthed to the Nadir port of the Unity module of the International Space Station on 14/11/2017 at 12:15 UTC. Its stay on the ISS was 21 days. It was unberthed on 05/12/2017 at 17:52 UTC and released by RMS on 06/12/2017 at 13:11 UTC. It deorbited on 18/12/2017 at 12:54 UTC.