Time for the second of three of Cygnus launches on Falcon 9!

Due to the retirement of the Antares 230+ rocket, Northrop Grumman purchased three missions from SpaceX to launch the Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station before the Antares 330 rocket enters operation and fulfill the CRS Phase 2 contract manifest. (NextSpaceflight)

| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2024-08-04, 15:02 | |

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| | Scheduled for (local) | 2024-08-04, 11:02 (EDT) | | Mission | CRS NG-21 | | Launch site | SLC-40, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA. | | Booster | B1080-10 | | Landing | LZ-1 | | Payload spacecraft | Cygnus | | Customer | Northrop Grumman / NASA | | Mission success criteria | Successful launch and docking to the ISS |

Webcasts

| Stream | Link | |

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| | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Aw8GziHrCQ | NASA | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhFi-h65kz0 | NASASpaceflight | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYjuWuVdTl4 | Spaceflight Now | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-nvTp0Ia0I (scrub) | The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRcESGxNIUs | SpaceX | https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1820108783718445462 | The Space Devs | TBD

Stats

Sourced from NextSpaceflight and r/SpaceX:

☑️ 36th launch from SLC-40 this year

☑️ 7 days, 9:53:00 turnaround for this pad

☑️ 42nd landing on LZ-1

☑️ 336th Falcon Family Booster landing, 346th Falcon recovery attempt

☑️ 6th consecutive successful Falcon 9 launch (if successful)

☑️ 75th Falcon 9 mission this year, 361st Falcon 9 mission overall

☑️ 76th SpaceX mission of 2024, 377th mission overall (excluding Starship flights)

☑️ 78th SpaceX launch this year, 390th SpaceX launch overall (including Starship flights)

Mission info

• SpaceX mission page
• Northrop Grumman mission page
• NASA mission page
• NextSpaceflight mission page

Cygnus NG-21 (Northrop Grumman-21) is a cargo resupply mission of the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA.

Northrop Grumman and NASA jointly developed a new space transportation system to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. The Cygnus cargo ship consists of two parts, a service module built in the USA based on the GEOStar platform, and a pressurized module, manufactured in France and Italy by Thales Alenia.