Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft departed the International Space Station (ISS) on July 12 after arriving there in February with 8,200 pounds of supplies, scientific investigations, commercial products, hardware, and other essential cargo.
NASA has just shared some stunning images of the Cygnus ahead of its release from the orbital outpost, after which it descended to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
The images show the spacecraft from various angles and in extraordinary detail while still attached to the station via the Canadarm2 robotic arm.
📸: @northropgrumman's Cygnus space freighter is pictured attached to the Canadarm2 robotic arm ahead of its release from the space station. Cygnus was released on July 12 at 7:01am ET, ending its five-and-a-half month stay at the orbiting lab. More pix: https://t.co/2k1R6AqEMs pic.twitter.com/EU8FoXPtQE
— International Space Station (@Space_Station) July 17, 2024
Cygnus began its journey to the space station from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, launching atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This was Cygnus’ first flight on a Falcon 9 as it’s usually lifted to orbit by an Antares 230+ rocket. Antares used Ukrainian-built first stages and Russian rocket engines, and so supply chains have been disrupted by the war there. The Antares 230+ has now been retired and will be replaced by the Antares 330 — developed by Northrop Grumman and Texas-based Firefly Aerospace — which should be ready next year.
The latest Cygnus flight marked Northrop Grumman’s 20th commercial resupply services mission to the station for the American space agency.
The Cygnus spacecraft’s first operational mission took place in 2013 and since then it has suffered only one failure, in 2014, though this was due to an anomaly with the upper stage of the Antares rocket rather than any kind of fault with the spacecraft.
Cygnus comprises a service module and a pressurized cargo module for transporting crew supplies, equipment, and scientific experiments to the space station some 250 miles above Earth.
The service module deploys advanced avionics together with guidance and navigation components that allow Cygnus to autonomously dock with the ISS.
Cygnus has undergone a number of design improvements over the years to enable it to carry more cargo, while engineering enhancements have also boosted other aspects of the vehicle.