Oriented on making people closer

Russian cosmonaut Ivan Wagner, who in May this year made a photo of Turkmenabat (formerly Chardzhou) from the ISS at the request of the author of ORIENT, on his page on the social network, told how the Cygnus NG-14 spacecraft arrived at the orbital station, describing the process of tracking and capturing it using the station's robotic arm.

“Just like last time, Chris and I caught the ship and then docked to the ISS with the help of Canadarm2 (a mobile service system),” Wagner wrote. - We began to track its approach one orbit before the “capture” at a distance of 1000 meters. At that moment we were over Ethiopia, and then we watched over the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Turkmenistan ... In the Far East, we went into the shadows, and at the capture point Cygnus arrived, emerging from the shadows.”

For Ivan Wagner, this is the first flight into space. On April 9th, 2020, together with Roscosmos cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin and NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy, he launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome on the Soyuz MS-16 spacecraft as a flight engineer.

Cygnus NG-14 is the fourteenth supply mission of the Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the ISS. It delivered provisions and things for the crew to the station, almost 4 tons of various equipment, including for scientific research and spacewalk, and even an experimental space toilet.

Cygnus also delivered a module for a radish cultivation experiment. With this experiment, the researchers will test how plants grow under different lighting and soil conditions. According to NASA, it “can help optimize the growth of plants in space, as well as assess their nutritional value and taste.”

Another experiment will help scientists develop more effective and safer cancer treatments. Testing cancer drugs in microgravity could help identify treatments that “are good candidates for safer, more effective and affordable drugs against leukemia and other cancers,” NASA said in a statement.

And these are just a few of a number of experiments that the ISS crew will have to do.

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