International Space Station commercial resupply mission
The Cygnus NG-12 cargo spacecraft, S.S. Alan Bean, launches from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s Pad 0A at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia aboard an upgraded Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Antares 230+ rocket at 9:59 a.m. EDT Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019. On board the two-day flight to the International Space Station are the Aerospace Rogue Alpha/Beta Cubesats, which have officially achieved their priority mission of developing a small low Earth orbit constellation in just 18 months for the Space and Missile Systems Center Development Corps at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, California. The cubesats will collect data on cloud backgrounds to inform future low Earth orbit missions. The Air Force will also utilize this program’s data to investigate potential uses of the capability. (Image credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA)