Antares NG-18 Launch

[Antares JS]

Arrived for my shift this morning, and Cygnus team is doing their late cargo loading right now. I'll be taking care of some engineering data collection while there's downtime for the Antares team.

Launch is at 0550 eastern/1020 UTC on Sunday. The 0550 time DOES account for the fact that we will be turning our clocks back tonight.

 

[Scott_650]

Hopefully your weather forecast is better than ours! We have early morning rain, then partly cloudy with a pretty stiff breeze from the SW in the forecast - should make for interesting launches and muddy recoveries

Good luck with NG-18 - we’re just outside the possible viewing area even with clear skies.

 

[Antares JS]

Mobile clean room and fairing tarp removed.

 

[Antares JS]

Vehicle erect.

 

[Antares JS]

Leaving work.

I sincerely hope this is the last time I see it up close.

 

[techrat]

Woot! Normally I drive down to Washington's Rock in Warren NJ for a clear view of the launch, but this time it's just too damn early. I'll catch it on Youtube.

 

[Antares JS]

Scrub due to a fire alarm in the Cygnus control room.

Getting ready for work now...

 

[Antares JS]

Of course there was no fire at all, but ISS launch windows are only 5 minutes so almost any interruption spells doom.

 

[neil_w]

Woot! Normally I drive down to Washington's Rock in Warren NJ for a clear view of the launch, but this time it's just too damn early. I'll catch it on Youtube.

Do you actually get a good view from there? That's right on the way to work for me...

 

[techrat]

Do you actually get a good view from there? That's right on the way to work for me...

If the launch veers north/northeast and it's NIGHT (or dark), you can get a fair view from Washington's Rock. You'll actually see something with a bright plume, and once I was there also witnessed first stage sep, second stage ignite, which made the crowd go "woo". Cape May would be a better spot, but that's a really long drive to watch something that lasts a few seconds.

 

[Antares JS]

Of course there was no fire at all, (...)

Going to have to scratch that. There actually was a minor fire in a server room in at Cygnus control in Dulles.

 

[Antares JS]

Oh, and next attempt is 5:27 tomorrow.

 

[techrat]

Oh, and next attempt is 5:27 tomorrow.

I'm getting up for work by then so I will try and watch "live", although I'll be brushing my teeth in front of the TV.

 

[bad_idea]

I try to catch every Anteres launch (only online sadly), but this weekend has been busy and tiring, so I doubt I'll pry myself out of bed early enough to watch this one (just as I didn't for the scrub this morning). Good luck to everyone at Orbital/Northrop-Grumman, and for those of you who get the chance to watch either online or in person, enjoy!

 

[Antares JS]

Launched. Not much to see from my house due to the clouds. Back to bed.

 

[techrat]

Yeah... too many clouds, and N/G needs to learn that we live in the youtube age, and they should spring for a couple of cameras mounted on the rocket. SpaceX seems to understand their audience, who want to see stuff go up and also look down onto the planet. I know it was dark so there still wouldn't be much to see, but 30 seconds into the flight, they cut to some lame RockSim display, I would have been better off looking up from my backyard.

 

[Marc_G]

Looks like solar panel trouble:

https://apnews.com/article/space-la...s-sally-ride-4c349e9c225861304b0836f3397f15a0

 

[Antares JS]

Looks like solar panel trouble:

https://apnews.com/article/space-la...s-sally-ride-4c349e9c225861304b0836f3397f15a0

I'm just a launch guy. Once the payload separates from the second stage, it's not my problem anymore.