MOSCOW, September 22 (RIA Novosti) – The docking of a space freighter developed by a private US company with the International Space Station (ISS) has been delayed for at least 48 hours, NASA has reported.
The Cygnus spacecraft, developed by Orbital Sciences, was launched on Wednesday on board the Antares carrier rocket from a NASA launch pad in Virginia. It was set to deliver about 1,300 pounds (589 kilograms) of cargo to the orbital outpost.
Orbital Sciences has confirmed that “at around 1:30 a.m. EDT, its Cygnus spacecraft established direct data contact with the International Space Station (ISS) and found that some of the data received had values that it did not expect, causing Cygnus to reject the data.”
“The minimum turnaround time to resume the approach to the ISS following an interruption such as this is approximately 48 hours due to orbital mechanics of the approach trajectory,” NASA said.
Cygnus is expected to stay at the orbital station for about a month before making a dive in the Earth’s atmosphere to plunge in the Pacific Ocean.
Orbital Sciences was selected in 2008 to work with NASA on the space agency’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which helps US companies develop privately operated, cost-effective and safe space transportation systems.
Another COTS partner company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), began working with NASA in 2006, and after a successful test flight of its Dragon space freighter in 2012, began flying regular cargo missions to the space station.
