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Northrop Grumman launches its last Antares rocket with Russian RD-181 engine

The docking with the ISS is scheduled after 4:30 a.m. EST (11:30 a.m. Moscow time) on August 4

NEW YORK, August 2. /TASS/. US company Northrop Grumman carried out the final launch of the Antares rocket, equipped with RD-181 engines designed by Russia’s Energomash design bureau early on Wednesday.

Antares, carrying the Cygnus spacecraft delivering cargo to the International Space Station (ISS), was launched at 8:31 p.m. EST on August 1 (03:31 a.m. August 2 Moscow time). The spacecraft has around 3.7 tons of cargo on board, including food and scientific equipment.

The docking with the ISS is scheduled after 4:30 a.m. EST (11:30 a.m. Moscow time) on August 4. The spacecraft will remain docked with the station for a few months, before undocking from the ISS, re-entering and burning in the dense layers of the Earth's atmosphere.

Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 TV Channel in March 2022 that the Russian state-run space corporation Roscosmos would halt the deliveries of rocket engines to the United States in response to anti-Russia sanctions. The ban applies to RD-180 engines that are used on US Atlas V launch vehicles as the main propulsion systems and RD-181 thrusters operated as the first stage of Antares rockets, the Roscosmos chief said.

The current crew on board the ISS includes Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin (TASS special correspondent on the ISS), Andrey Fedyaev, NASA astronauts Frank Rubio, Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg, as well as United Arab Emirates’ astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi.

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