Matthew Nelson
Spaceflight has entered into an agreement with Hypergiant SEOPS to support the deployment of small customer satellites from a Northrop Grumman spacecraft docked at the International Space Station as part of a ridershare service.
The cubesats are scheduled to fly later this month aboard a Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the Dragon capsule during SpaceX's cargo reupply mission to the ISS, Spaceflight said Wednesday.
ISS crew will receive the cargo and integrate SEOPS-built SlingShot Deployer with the satellites intro a similar deployment platform attached to Cygnus, which will then launch the cubesats once the spacecraft reaches an altitude of 280 miles to 311 miles.
“The rideshare campaign is a low schedule risk option because of the regular cadence of ISS Cargo Resupply Missions and the maturity of the Dragon/Falcon 9 and Cygnus/Antares launch systems," said Curt Blake, CEO at Spaceflight.
The cubesats include NARSS-Egypt's NARSSCube2 satellite, Northwest Nazarene University's RFTSat and an undisclosed six-unit cubesat.
Cygnus arrived at ISS in April as part of the firm's 11th and final cargo delivery mission to the space station.
