Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket launches Cygnus freighter to ISS
Capitalism in space: Early this morning Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket successfully completed its second launch this year, lifting off from Wallops Island and carrying a Cygnus freighter for ISS.
This launch is also the next-to-last for this version of Antares. Northrop Grumman is using up the last few first stages built in the Ukraine that use Russian engines, after which it will send the next three Cygnus capsules into space using SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It hopes to introduce a new Antares using a Firefly first stage following that.
The leader board in the 2022 launch race remains the same:
51 SpaceX
48 China
19 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
7 ULA
American private enterprise still leads China 73 to 48 in the national rankings, but trails the rest of the world combined 76 to 73.
Capitalism in space: Early this morning Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket successfully completed its second launch this year, lifting off from Wallops Island and carrying a Cygnus freighter for ISS.
This launch is also the next-to-last for this version of Antares. Northrop Grumman is using up the last few first stages built in the Ukraine that use Russian engines, after which it will send the next three Cygnus capsules into space using SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It hopes to introduce a new Antares using a Firefly first stage following that.
The leader board in the 2022 launch race remains the same:
51 SpaceX
48 China
19 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
7 ULA
American private enterprise still leads China 73 to 48 in the national rankings, but trails the rest of the world combined 76 to 73.