{"id":142807,"date":"2025-09-17T06:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T06:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/142807\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T06:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T06:44:10","slug":"thruster-issue-delays-cygnus-arrival-at-iss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/142807\/","title":{"rendered":"Thruster issue delays Cygnus arrival at ISS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PARIS \u2014 NASA is delaying the arrival of a Cygnus spacecraft at the International Space Station to investigate a thruster problem with the cargo vehicle.<\/p>\n<p>NASA announced late Sept. 16 that the NG-23 Cygnus would not arrive at the vicinity of the station early Sept. 17, as originally scheduled, after the spacecraft\u2019s main engine shut down prematurely during two burns earlier in the day designed to raise its orbit.<\/p>\n<p>Neither the agency nor Northrop Grumman, which operates Cygnus, provided additional details about the issue. NASA noted that all other systems on the cargo spacecraft were working as expected.<\/p>\n<p>Cygnus <a href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/falcon-9-launches-upgraded-cygnus-cargo-spacecraft-to-iss\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 Sept. 14<\/a> with about 5,000 kilograms of cargo on board. The mission profile called for a 60-hour transit by Cygnus to the ISS, where the station\u2019s robotic arm would then grapple the spacecraft and berth it to the Unity module.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first flight of a larger version of Cygnus, called Cygnus XL, with a longer pressurized cargo module that can accommodate 33% more payload than the previous version. Northrop didn\u2019t note any changes to the spacecraft\u2019s service module, which includes the main thruster as well as power and other subsystems.<\/p>\n<p>This is not the first Cygnus mission with thruster problems. On the previous Cygnus mission, NG-21 launched in August 2024, <a href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/cygnus-spacecraft-suffers-glitches-after-launch\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the spacecraft failed to perform an initial orbit-raising burn after launch<\/a> because of what NASA described as a \u201ca late entry to burn sequencing\u201d problem, followed by a slightly low pressures in the main thruster. The problem, though, did not delay the spacecraft\u2019s arrival at the ISS.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/author\/jeff-foust\/\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-perfmatters-preload=\"\" width=\"80\" height=\"80\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/jeff_foust-1-150x150.jpg\" class=\"avatar avatar-80 photo wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJeff Foust writes about space policy, commercial space, and related topics for SpaceNews.&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\nHe earned a Ph.D. in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor\u2019s degree with honors in geophysics and planetary science&#8230;\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"author-link\" href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/author\/jeff-foust\/\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Jeff Foust\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS \u2014 NASA is delaying the arrival of a Cygnus spacecraft at the International Space Station to investigate&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[58955,408,92,90,1957,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-142807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-cygnus","9":"tag-iss","10":"tag-nasa","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-sn","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}