Officials unveiled the newest Cygnus spacecraft, set to be launched by an Antares rocket on Nov. 15 to bring supplies to the International Space Station.
Thursday evening, the spacecraft will travel the approximately seven miles from Wallops Flight Facility's main base to Wallops Island, where it will go through the necessary steps before the scheduled launch.
Kurt Eberly, a program manager for Antares, said once launched in November, the Cygnus will travel for nine minutes until it reaches orbit.
"It's very similar to our May mission," Eberly said. "We're looking to have another fully successful mission."
Following it its tradition of naming spacecraft after those people influential to space, Northrop Grumman, the company that makes Cygnus spacecraft, named it John Young.
Young was an astronaut who joined NASA in 1962, flew on Gemini and Apollo missions and who walked on the surface of the moon. He clocked 835 hours in space and held several roles before his retirement in 2004. Young died Jan. 5, 2018.
The S.S. John Young is the 10th commercial resupply mission from Northrop Grumman and will take with it supplies, satellites and several science experiments.
Rick Mastracchio, a former astronaut and a member of the Cygnus team, said the Cygnus works by pulling alongside the International Space Station. The ISS crew will capture it with a robotic arm and have access to the cargo.
"I always say the best day on orbit is when the Cygnus arrives, but it's also a great day on orbit when the Cygnus leaves," Mastracchio said. "Why? Because it takes away the trash. When the Cygnus takes away the trash, the space station is a better place, it's a brighter place, it's a bigger place and it smells a lot better."
The launch in November is set to take place at 4:49 a.m. Officials say they're being flexible with NASA, which is working to bring supplies to the ISS that was on the failed Soyuz mission two weeks ago.
Several NASA officials said the mission was on track for the planned Nov. 15 launch, but there are many things that could cause a potential delay, including weather.
The Cygnus will also take with it several experiments from scientists who for myriad reasons need their projects to be in space. Projects include new toilet stalls to be tested for eventual use on the Orion missions into deep space and a better cataloging system for those aboard the ISS to keep track of what they have.
Kathleen Boggs, systems and technology demonstrations manager at NASA, said the spacecraft would also take a refabricator, a tool that is effectively a 3-D printer as well as a recycler that turns existing parts into something else. It is set to expedite the process when things such as parts are needed in space by cutting down the time it takes to get it where it needs to be, be that on the ISS or on Mars.
"If we're going to the moon, it's days if you have to send something there. If we're going to Mars, it's months before you can get anything there," Boggs said. "Having the ability to print replacement parts or recycle them on demand is really important."
