On Thursdayย Orbital ATK’s Orb-4 mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) is scheduled to launch fromย Launch Complex 41ย atย Cape Canaveral, the same pad that saw the launch of both Voyager and Curiosity,ย and onboard the space freighter will be two Raspberry Piย boards.
The Cygnus spacecraft which will carry the Raspberry Pi boardsย to the ISS will launch on top of a ULA Atlas V after the loss of Orbital’s Antares rocket carrying Orb-3 at the tail end of last year. Theย Antares is not due to return to flight tillย the first half ofย next year.
Theย two Raspberry Pi boards are equipped with a camera as well as aย Sense HATย that can measure the environment inside the ISS as well as the Earth’s magnetic field. Each Pi has a different kind of camera; one is a standard visible light camera, the other one that images in the infraredย bands. Encased inside specially built aluminium flight casesย (shown below),ย the Raspberry Pi boards are being flown to the ISSย as part of the Astro Pi project, in support ofย British ESA Astronaut Tim Peakeโs missionย to the space station.
Tim Peake, along with NASA astronaut Tim Kopraย and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko, will follow the Astro Pi boards to the space station. They three are scheduled to launchย from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft on December 15th.
The Orb-4 mission will be closely watched. Not only because it is the first time that a Cygnus spacecraft has beenย launched on top of an Atlas V, but also because the station partnersย are hoping that this flight will end the run of bad luckย to hit station resupply missions over the last year or so.
You can watch the launch of the Astro Pi boards live on NASA TVย on Thursday, coverage starts at 4:30 p.m. EST (21:30 GMT). The launch of the Soyuz carrying Tim Peake and the rest ofย Expedition 46/47 crew will also be coveredย live on NASA TV.
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