Article Posted on : - Jun 01, 2011

International Space Station

TURIN (BNS): Thales Alenia Space has delivered its first Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) developed to transport cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).

This first PCM will be used for the CygnusTM demonstration mission, under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) research and development initiative with Orbital Sciences Corporation.

The module was shipped from the Thales Alenia Space plant in Turin, Italy to NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, where Orbital will integrate it with the Cygnus service module to produce the complete Cygnus spacecraft. The first mission is currently scheduled for December 2011.

Following the demonstration flight, Thales Alenia Space will provide Orbital with eight more PCM units to be used for ISS cargo transport, in order to deliver crew supplies, spare parts and scientific experiments to the Station under Orbital’s Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) contract with NASA.

The first PCM will be followed by three more units in “standard” configuration, capable of transporting up to 2,000 kg of cargo each, along with five “enhanced” configuration units, boosting payload capacity to 2,700 kg.

The CygnusTM spacecraft comprises a Service Module (SM) built by Orbital, and a Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) developed by Thales Alenia Space.