NASA’s SS Kalpana Chawla Cygnus arrives at ISS for ‘rendezvous and capture’

Following a successful launch of rthrop Grumman Cygnus craft, dubbed as S.S. Kalpana Chawla, NASA in a recent update informed that cargo ship arrived at International Station for ‘rendezvous and capture’ on October 5. uncrewed Cygnus craft launched on Friday, October 2 at 21:16 EDT (Saturday, 3 October at 01:16 UTC) from Pad 0A at Mid-Atlantic Regional port in Virginia. It is carrying nearly 8,000 pounds of scientific investigations, techlogy demonstrations and commercial products. 

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Aboard ISS, Expedition 63 Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA will capture craft assisted by Ivan Vagner of Roscosmos, who will monitor Cygnus systems during its approach for capture. two astronauts will use station’s robotic arm named 'Canadarm2', to reach out to craft and n physically berth it to a port on Unity (de-1) module. 

After craft SS Kalpana Chawla will be secured, crew members will click pictures of vehicle to document its arrival condition before y removing newly delivered Cargo, said NASA. Once cargo is removed, Cygnus will serve as an extended lab to International Station. Some of experiments will be performed in new extended laboratory. 

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SS Kalpana Chawla Cygnus 

SS Kalpana Chawla Cygnus which has been launched in by rthrop Grumman is made up of a Pressurised Cargo Module. Both sections of this craft had arrived separately in August. Once it was integrated toger, Cygnus was shifted to Horizontal Integration Facility where rest of Antares rocket will be attached to it. In order to keep up with tradition of naming every Cygnus vehicle after someone who has contributed in field of exploration, rthrop Grumman decided to hour Dr Kalpana Chawla.

Kalpana Chawla was first Indian-born woman to travel to . She was born on March 17, 1962, and completed her Bachelor of Engineering in Aeronautical engineering from Punjab Engineering College in India and later moved to United States in 1982. Chawla died on February 1, 2003, in Shuttle Columbia disaster along with her or crew members. Columbia disintegrated over Texas while it was re-entering into Earth's atmosphere. 

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