Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket successfully places Cygnus freighter into orbit
Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket tonight successfully launched a Cygnus freighter into orbit to ISS, flying for the last time with a first stage built in the Ukraine with engines from Russia.
Until Firefly can provide Northrop Grumman with a new American-made first stage, for the next three Cygnus cargo missions to ISS the company has purchased SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
This was Northrop Grumman’s first launch in 2023, so there is no change to the leader board in the 2023 launch race:
51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India
American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 59 to 30, and the entire world combined 59 to 50, with SpaceX by itself still leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 50.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket tonight successfully launched a Cygnus freighter into orbit to ISS, flying for the last time with a first stage built in the Ukraine with engines from Russia.
Until Firefly can provide Northrop Grumman with a new American-made first stage, for the next three Cygnus cargo missions to ISS the company has purchased SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket.
This was Northrop Grumman’s first launch in 2023, so there is no change to the leader board in the 2023 launch race:
51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India
American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 59 to 30, and the entire world combined 59 to 50, with SpaceX by itself still leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 50.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
In some ways, Cygnus is a real accomplishment. It will be launching on 5 different vehicles…
Antares 1xx series
Atlas V
Antares 2xx series
Falcon 9
Antares 3xx series
That is kind of cool Mayb only GPS comes close to that record of different launch vehicles?
Falcon 9, Atlas V, Atlas II what else? I cannot be bothered to look it up.
geoffc kind of asked: “That is kind of cool Mayb only GPS comes close to that record of different launch vehicles?”
Iridium initially launched on a wide variety of launch vehicles, too. Wikipedia says the first generation launched on four vehicles: U.S. Delta II, Russia’s Proton-K/DM2 and /strong>Rokot/Briz-KM, and China’s Long March 2C/SD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation#First_generation
The point is a good one, though. Most satellites and probes are designed to be able to handle the conditions and fairing envelopes of three or so launch vehicles, in case a backup is necessary, but not many get to fly on very many different vehicles. Even each generation of GPS may not have flown on five different vehicles. Some of the GPS antennas were sensitive information, so it probably only launched on U.S. vehicles, limiting the number of different vehicles for each generation of satellite.