Cygnus Cargo Craft Departs International Space Station

Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo ship has departed the International Space Station after a successful 72 day mission to resupply the orbiting laboratory.

Having been unberthed from the Unity Module of the complex earlier in the day, Expedition 46 Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineer Tim Kopra used the station's 57-foot robotic arm to release the unmanned Cygnus at 12:26 p.m. GMT as the two vehicles flew 400 kilometers over Bolivia. This positioned Cygnus for a fiery re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean on Saturday.

Cygnus departs the International Space Station(File photo)
credit: NASA

On its fourth mission to resupply the space station, the vehicle nicknamed "S.S. Deke Slayton II" launched atop an Atlas V rocket carrying over 3,500 kilograms of cargo from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral in Florida on December 6.

Among the cargo which served the Expedition 45/46 crews was a new life sciences facility and a micro-satellite deployer, as well as food and other crew provisions.

Today's departure of Deke Slayton II also marks the beginning of a busy period of traffic from visiting vehicles to and from the station. 

On March 1 the year-long mission to the ISS conducted by Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will come to an end as the pair undock their Soyuz TMA-18M from the Poisk module on the Russian segment of the International Space Station alongside Sergey Volkov.

Kelly and Kornienko have been living aboard the station since their arrival on March 28 2015. By the time they return to Earth they will have spent 340 days in space and traveled over 140 million miles.

The departure of Kelly, Kornienko and Volkov will clear the way for the arrival of the next Soyuz to bring three new crew members to the International Space Station. Cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka, Alexey Ovchinin and astronaut Jeff Williams will dock their Soyuz TMA-20M to the vacant docking port on Poisk on March 19. This will be followed just three days later by the launch of the next Cygnus vehicle on it's fifth flight to the station.

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See the Space Station over the UK and Ireland in December

The International Space Station is back flying over the skies of the UK and Ireland this month. The station will be visible after sunset from Monday December 7 up until the evening of Friday December 18. 

Below are the times that the ISS will be visible over the UK and Ireland this December.

*Please note: The details provided above are for Cork, Ireland, so times and sightings will vary slightly depending on your location. Times courtesy of http://spotthestation.nasa.gov

How to see the space station?

If you're out looking for the space station and worried you might not be able to see it- don't worry- you literally can't miss it!

Traveling at a speed of approximately 5 miles a second at an altitude of around 250 miles above the Earth, the International Space Station orbits our planet every 92 minutes. It's the size of a football field with huge solar arrays to supply it with power. Sunlight reflecting off the arrays mean the station is visible from Earth during dawn and dusk, when skies are a bit darker for observers on the ground.

The International Space Station
credit: Wikipedia

You don't need any special equipment- just your eyes. All you are required to know is what time it will be passing over and where to look. It's that easy!

There's nothing like seeing the ISS for the first time! For me, the best thing about it is knowing that there are people living and working up there. Who knows? Maybe while you're looking up at them, one of the six astronauts and cosmonauts on board will be looking out the window at you!

Once you see the orbital complex for the first time, you'll find that you'll want to keep seeing it over and over again! So be sure to tell all your friends, family and neighbours to watch out for the space station flying overhead. There really is no other site quite like it!

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