CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A Northrop Grumman capsule sent several tonnes of supplies to the International Space Station, even though one of the solar panels was stuck.
After leaving Virginia, the shipment got there in two days. After the ship took off, only one of the two round solar panels on the ship opened. The flight controllers tried in vain to open the stuck panel, but they were able to get enough power with just one.
As the capsule slowly came closer, the people on the space station took pictures so engineers could figure out what went wrong. Then, NASA astronaut Nicole Mann used the station’s robot arm to grab the S.S. Sally Ride, which was named after the first American woman to go into space.
Among the 8,200 pounds (3,700 kilograms) of supplies are brackets needed for a spacewalk next week to increase the station’s power, as well as apples, blueberries, cheese, peanut butter, and ice cream for the station’s seven-person U.S. Russian, and a Japanese crew. Northrop Grumman is one of two companies that send cargo to NASA. The second is SpaceX, which will send a package into space at the end of this month.
The Health and Science Department of the Associated Press gets help from the Department of Science Education at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. All content is the sole responsibility of the AP.
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