The Cygnus spacecraft, launched on January 9, has just reached the International Space Station and was captured by the robotic arm Canadarm2. Astronauts Mike Hopkins and Koichi Wakata started the slow maneuver that will move Cygnus until it docks with the Station’s Harmony node.

The mission of the Cygnus spacecraft was flawless. The delays in the start were due to causes not related to Orbital Sciences while the Antares rocket and the spacecraft offered the performances they were expected from lift-off to the delicate phase of approach to the International Space Station.

The Orb-1 mission is basically accomplished because the Cygnus spacecraft can’t land and when it comes back into Earth’s atmosphere it will disintegrate. For this reason, it will be used to get rid of pieces of hardware that faulty or that can’t be be used any longer on the International Space Station: they will be loaded on the Cygnus and will disintegrate along with it.

This final use of the Cygnus “C. Gordon Fullerton” spacecraft is relatively simple and will probably take place around mid-February. In these cases, an exact date for the departure of a cargo spacecraft is never scheduled because it also depends on other tasks with higher priority.

Tomorrow the crew of the International Space Station should open the hatch of the Cygnus spaceship and then start downloading its cargo. Then, all that has now become trash will be loaded on the Cygnus and the spacecraft will be ready for departure. Those tasks will slowly go on for some weeks.

This was the first of eight official missions included in Orbital Sciences’ contract with NASA to resupply the International Space Station. It was important for the USA because now the country has two spaceships capable of carrying cargo to the Station since there’s also the SpaceX Dragon.

In the missions carried out so far, the Cygnus spacecraft has used the Lidar (Light Detection And Ranging ) sensors in its approach to the International Space Station. Starting with next mission, called Orb-2, it could start testing the more sophisticated TriDAR (Triangulation and LIDAR Automated Rendezvous and Docking) system, designed by the Canadian company Neptec with the support by NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. It might take place in May 2014.

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