..............
Update: NASA and Northrop Grumman are targeting the safe arrival of the company’s Cygnus XL at approximately 7:18 a.m. EDT Thursday, Sept. 18, to the International Space Station.
The Cygnus XL will now conduct a series of burns to bring the spacecraft to the space station for its robotic capture and installation.
On Sept. 16, Cygnus XL commanded the main engine to shutdown earlier than planned during two, non-sequential rendezvous burns (delta velocity burns 3 and 5), designed to raise the orbit of the spacecraft for rendezvous with the space station. Cygnus XL’s trajectory placed the spacecraft a safe distance behind the space station while engineers assessed the spacecraft and developed its alternate burn plan.
Data shared by the spacecraft confirmed that Cygnus XL operated as intended during two planned maneuvers when an early warning system initiated a shutdown command and ended the main engine burn because of a conservative safeguard in the software settings.