When the Orbital-1 cargo resupply mission arrived at the International Space Station Sunday, an experiment designed by NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland was among the cargo onboard.
The experiment, entitled, “Burning and Suppression of Solids – II (BASS-II),” will investigate the combustion of a variety of solid materials. Samples to be burned include assorted plastic items and fabric sheets. These experiments will provide novel science data and help guide more comprehensive flight experiments under development.
Orbital-1 is NASA’s first contracted resupply mission to the space station by U.S. company Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va. Orbital’s Cygnus spacecraft launched atop the company’s Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia at 1:07 p.m. EST on Thursday, Jan. 9.
Orbital developed its Antares and Cygnus with NASA and successfully completed a test mission to the space station in September, enabling the first of eight planned contract resupply flights by the company. Expedition 38 crew members captured the Orbital-1 Cygnus using the space station’s robotic arm at 6:08 a.m. EST on Sunday. The capsule is scheduled to remain attached to the station through mid-January. It then will return for a destructive reentry in Earth’s atmosphere.
The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has had continuous human occupation since November 2000. In that time it has been visited by more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft. The space station remains the springboard to NASA’s next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.
For more information about the Orbital-1 mission and the International Space Station, visit:
For more information about NASA’s BASS experiments, visit:
http://spaceflightsystems.grc.nasa.gov/SOPO/ICHO/IRP/MSG/BASS/
