Ride, Sally Ride! Northrop Grumman Launches Cygnus S.S. Sally Ride; fails to deploy solar array

Launch of NG-18 seen from the Wallops Visitor Center | Credit: Thomas (myself!) for Future Astronaut

On Monday, November 7 at 5:32am ET (10:32 UTC), Northrop Grumman launched the Cygnus NG-18 resupply mission to the ISS on an Antares 230+ rocket from LP-0A (Launch Pad 0A) at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) located in NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The spacecraft is named after the first American woman in space, Sally Ride. Capture and berthing of Cygnus is scheduled for November 9. At T+4 hours, Northrop Grumman attempted to deploy the solar arrays on S.S. Sally Ride (the name of the Cygnus spacecraft). One solar array was successfully deployed but the other one failed to do so. Northrop Grumman has informed NASA that Cygnus has enough power to complete its primary mission of taking supplies to the ISS (though it probably doesn't have enough power to do the orbital experiments after release). NASA is currently assessing this.