spacetoday.net: Cygnus arrival at ISS delayed to Saturday

Posted: Tue, Sep 24, 2013, 6:32 AM ET (1032 GMT)
Cygnus approaching ISS illustration (Orbital Sciences Corp.)

Orbital Sciences and NASA have pushed back the arrival of the company's first Cygnus cargo spacecraft until Saturday, citing a tight schedule on the station with the planned arrival of a new crew. Cygnus, launched on Wednesday, was originally schedule to arrive at the station on Sunday, but a software glitch detected as the spacecraft arrived in the vicinity of the station early Sunday delayed berthing until Tuesday. While Orbital engineers developed a fix for the software problem, the company and NASA concluded the scheduled would be too tight to accommodate Cygnus as well as the arrival late Wednesday of a Soyuz spacecraft carrying three new ISS crewmembers. The Cygnus arrival is now planned for no earlier than Saturday, with an exact schedule to be determined after the Soyuz arrives at the station.