NASA Holds Pre-Launch ISS Resupply Status and Science Briefings

NASA and Orbital Sciences Corp. held a pre-launch status and science briefings today to discuss the next mission to resupply the International Space Station scheduled for tomorrow Monday, October 27.
Orbital’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft will launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia and will transport almost 5,000 pounds of supplies, including science experiments, crew provisions, spare parts and experiment hardware. Expedition 41 crew members Reid Wiseman and Barry Wilmore of NASA will be ready in the station’s cupola to capture the resupply craft with the station’s robotic arm and install it on the Earth-facing port of the station’s Harmony module. This mission is the third of eight Orbital flights NASA contracted with the company to resupply the space station, and the fourth trip by a Cygnus spacecraft to the orbiting laboratory.

Continuing the tradition of naming its spacecraft after astronauts who have made significant contributions to spaceflight, Orbital dubbed this Cygnus resupply ship the SS Deke Slayton. The name is a tribute to original Mercury 7 astronaut Donald “Deke” K. Slayton, who flew on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission in 1975 and championed commercial space endeavors after retiring from NASA in 1982. Slayton passed away in 1993.

Mission Status Briefing

Mission Science Briefing