'Acoustic blanket' cuts power by 50 percent
An Cygnus cargo ship has successfully made it to the International Space Station despite the failure of half its solar panel array.
The Cygnus vehicle, built by Northrop Grumman and named S.S. Sally Ride – after the late physicist and first American woman to fly to space in 1983 – was launched atop the company's Antares 230+ rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia on Monday. Mission Control later discovered one of its two solar panels did not deploy properly. Engineers gave up trying to correct the issue and said the spacecraft had enough power to reach the ISS in its less than ideal state. Thankfully they were right, and as it got closer astronaut Nicole Mann brought it in using the space station's Canadarm2 robotic arm on Wednesday at 0520 ET .
"During a rocket stage separation event, debris from an Antares acoustic blanket became lodged in one of the Cygnus solar array mechanisms, preventing it from opening," Cyrus Dhalla, vice president and general manager, Tactical Space Systems at Northrop Grumman, in a statement."Successful berthing was achieved thanks to Cygnus's robust design and the resilience and ingenuity of the NASA and Northrop Grumman teams."
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