Wallops provides a vital lifeline for astronauts on Space Station

As many Americans have learned over this past year, working from home has its benefits and drawbacks. Internet connection can be spotty, it’s easy to get cabin fever, and there’s no time apart from your roommate or significant other.

But there’s also a comfort in staying home, with no commute to worry about and no expectation of wearing anything other than sweats.

Six people would have it no other way — albeit in a work-from-home setup 200 miles above the Earth, living and working aboard the International Space Station. ISS passed 20 years of continuous human occupancy in November, a tremendous milestone for science, space travel and international cooperation.

The important task of keeping astronauts alive and happy while orbiting the Earth’s atmosphere is no simple task, and the staff at Wallops Flight Facility have been contributing to this vital mission since 2013.

Wallops, partnered with Northrup Grumman and Virginia Space, sends Antares rockets from its launchpad twice a year. Attached to the Antares rocket is a spacecraft called Cygnus, which contains supplies for astronauts like food and cargo vital to keeping the space station fully operational.

In the past eight years, Wallops has sent 11 deliveries to the space station, containing about 37 tons of cargo. Equally as important, Cygnus takes waste off the space station, which all burns up as the spacecraft reenters the Earth’s atmosphere.

Northrop Grumman's latest commercial resupply mission in October last year carried 8,000 pounds of cargo into space.

“When it comes to Antares and when it comes to having Cygnus supply the space station, it really becomes the most critical project on the range,” said Shannon Fitzpatrick, branch head of the Guidance, Navigation and Control and Mission Systems Engineering branch at Wallops.

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“Some of the other customers might not want to hear that, but the reality is, it has to do with life and death of astronauts up in space.”

In 2008, Northrop Grumman was awarded a NASA contract, called a Commercial Resupply Service, to begin launching spacecraft to resupply the Space Station. When looking for a launch site, Northrop Grumman set up a bit of a competition between Wallops and a launchpad in Florida, before settling on Wallops.

“(Wallops) had a better plan in terms of getting access to funding, having the right people, having the real estate,” said Kurt Eberly, Antares Program Manager for Northrop. “We thought it was a much better plan that Virginia had laid out.”

After a successful test flight and demonstration mission in April and September of 2013, respectively, the first operational mission of Antares launched in January of 2014.

“Think of it like FedEx,” Eberly said. “NASA calls up FedEx — which is us. They say I want to bring 2,000 kilograms of cargo up to the space station on this date. We say OK. Bring it to Wallops.”

Wallops staff track the Antares Rocket as it launches from the island, until it detaches from the spacecraft. As the rocket enters the horizon, Wallops staff in its Bermuda tracking station provides downrange tracking, telemetry and flight termination support.

When the rocket drops off Cygnus it is in a low orbit, meaning the spacecraft must use its thrusters to move further out into space to eventually reach the same orbit as the Space Station and catch its path. On a given day, the Space Station could be in any location above the Earth.

“We've had so many Antares launches that now that it's a pretty well-oiled machine for the most part,” Fitpatrick said.

Wallops is one of only two U.S. launch pads that supply the Space Station, the other being Cape Canaveral, which launches SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft.

Astronauts on the Space Station are constantly engaged in science experiments that test the impact of weightlessness and microgravity on things as simple as the hardening of concrete, to things as complex as cancer treatments.

Cygnus has also supported ISS research into how living in space impacts bone density, and research that looks into dark and anti-matter to better understand the origins of the universe.

Much of the research on the Space Station is dedicated to understanding the effects of long-term space travel on the human body and mind.

How to keep astronauts in good health and good fitness, how to keep them well-fed and in touch with their families, are all important problems to solve, which will inform future trips to Mars or other long-term missions.

Cygnus has also supported the ever-important Universal Waste Management System, a better and more compact space toilet.

“To me, these 20 years (on the Space Station) are investments in how we’re going to go the moon and go to mars later,” Eberly said.

The Space Station is a shining example of the benefits of international collaboration. Despite bitter politics (and sometimes wars) between countries on their home planet, astronauts from the U.S., Europe, Japan, Canada and Russia have all managed to cooperate on the Space Station for the common good.

“You can get so much more done when you can take advantage of the budgets of multiple space agencies,” Eberly said.

With the Space Station operating through at least the remaining decade, Wallops and Northrop Grumman have already secured a contract with NASA to launch Antares through 2023.

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“The employees at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility have supported the International Space Station since its beginning. The facility provided critical tracking support during construction of the orbiting outpost, and today, Wallops serves as one of two U.S. launch sites providing cargo to the station,” said Wallops director David Pierce.

“We are proud of our partnership with Virginia Space and Northrop Grumman in supporting this international endeavor and we’re looking forward to contributing more to our ongoing human presence in space, the journey to the Moon through the Artemis program, and onward to Mars.”