On October 3, 2020, a medium-class Antares launch vehicle lifted off from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the U.S., at 4:16 Kyiv time and made its twelfth successful flight. The rocket placed the automated cargo spacecraft Cygnus loaded with about 3629 kg of cargo into orbit on a resupply mission to the International Space Station under the contract with NASA.

Antares carrying the Cygnus spacecraft is a two-stage launch vehicle whose Stage 1 Core was developed by Yuzhnoye State Design Office and manufactured by Yuzhmash Machine-Building Plant, together with other Ukrainian companies such as Khartron-ARKOS, Kyivprylad, Khartron-YUKOM, CHEZARA, RAPID, and others. The Northrop Grumman Corporation of the United States is the prime developer of the Antares launch vehicle.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic over the world, resupplying and operating the ISS remains a top priority for the world’s community.

The coordinated and successful work of Ukrainian and American specialists ensures the operation of the International Space Station that permanently accommodates a crew of three to six people who depend on supplies from Earth.

Yuzhnoye’s chief executives and leading specialists, together with honorable guests and Head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration Oleksandr Bondarenko, watched today’s launch of the Antares launch vehicle.

The Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, who provides strong support to the Ukrainian space industry, gave his congratulations to Alexander Degtyarev, Yuzhnoye General Director, on the successful launch of Antares and wished new achievements to Yuzhnoye and other Ukrainian companies in the space industry.

Yuzhnoye, Yuzhmash, and Khartron-ARKOS specialists took part in testing, preparing, and launching the Antares launch vehicle. Under the contract, Yuzhnoye provided technical support to the launch, received, and processed the real-time telemetry data. Ukrainian specialists performed the full scope of operations under their responsibility.

The Ukrainian and world’s space industries are adapting themselves to cooperating in new conditions and are returning bit by bit, following all safety requirements, to the work process they used to.

Following the tradition, Northrop Grumman has named the Cygnus-15 mission after American astronaut Kalpana Chawla, the first woman of Indian origin to go to space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia on November 19, 1997, together with Ukrainian astronaut Leonid Kadenyuk. Kalpana Chawla was one of the seven crew members who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003 when the spacecraft broke apart during its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere after its second space flight.

The NG-14 mission delivered more than 20 pieces of payload and research hardware, including the following:

  • Onco Selectors, the experiment designed to identify medicines based on oncoselective ribonucleic acids (messenger RNA, or mRNA) that can be used in the microgravity conditions to detect cancer cells.
  • Materials for carrying out investigations of plant growth through cultivating reddish as a try for future cultivation of crops in space.
  • Universal Waste Management System (UWMS), a new compact toilet for astronauts, to be used in future missions to the Moon and Mars.
  • VR-camera that astronauts will use during their spacewalking. The imagery shot will be used for making final episodes of the Space Explorers: The ISS Experience series.
  • Spacecraft Fire Experiment-V (Saffire-V) hardware for investigating the process of burning, the behavior of smoke, and the propagation of fire in the microgravity conditions. The experiment will start after the Cygnus leaves the ISS.
  • Alpha, Bobcat-1, NEUTRON-1, and SPOC CubeSats developed in universities.

The spacecraft will berth to the ISS on Monday, October 5, at 12:20 Kyiv time.