Cygnus Departs Space Station, Begins 4-Month Secondary Mission
DULLES, Va. (Northrop Grumman PR) – Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) announced that its Cygnus™ spacecraft has successfully unberthed and departed from the International Space Station (ISS), beginning its secondary mission before it reenters Earth’s atmosphere. The NG-11 Cygnus spacecraft, named in honor of Apollo 1 astronaut and space visionary Roger Chaffee, left the ISS after a 109 day stay at the station.
While docked at the orbiting laboratory, astronauts unloaded approximately 7,000 pounds of vital supplies and scientific equipment. They then loaded approximately 5,300 pounds of disposable cargo on to Cygnus for removal from the station.
The next phase of the mission will demonstrate enhanced capabilities Cygnus offers that go well beyond cargo supply and disposal. The spacecraft will deploy multiple CubeSats via the Slingshot CubeSat Deployer System installed by NASA astronauts prior to unberthing from the ISS, and the NanoRacks external CubeSat deployer.
Cygnus will then remain in orbit to coincide with a second Cygnus spacecraft scheduled for launch in October to the International Space Station — its first extended duration flight to demonstrate its capability to fly two Cygnus vehicles simultaneously and support hosted payloads for longer periods of time. This newest innovation reinforces Cygnus’ ability to serve a robust and growing commercial economy in low earth orbit.
Northrop Grumman is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions in autonomous systems, cyber, C4ISR, space, strike, and logistics and modernization to customers worldwide. Please visit news.northropgrumman.com and follow us on Twitter, @NGCNews, for more information.
12 responses to “Cygnus Departs Space Station, Begins 4-Month Secondary Mission”
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4 months of free flying…wow the first commercial free flyer…way to go OSC
Good to see them employing some sort of reuse of Cygnus after its primary mission has concluded.
Could the two dock to each other?
No, because Cygnus doesn’t have a docking mechanism. Instead, Cygnus has a CBM and an SSRMS grapple fixture. The grapple fixture is for the Space Station Remote Manipulator System to grab as Cygnus is in a “hold” pattern very close to ISS.
Cygnus also has a Common Berthing Mechanism for the semi-permanent connection to ISS. For the CBM to work, the SSRMS moves the Cygnus to an ISS CBM port and holds it there until the CBMs can be physically attached by motor driven bolts. Once the seals are verified as air tight, the hatches on the Cygnus and ISS CBMs can be opened.
They should build one with 8 berthing ports around it and docking ports on each end. You could just plug them in as a commercial rental unit at the ISS.
I suspect that is going to happen at some point
why 8 berthing ports? I can see 4 or 6, but not 8.
Personally, I am amazed that Thales has NOT done this yet as connectors for ISS.
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I really am amazed that more companies are not jumping all over space by pre-building things and making it available to NASA/ESA to get things really moving. Sadly, most are old space, and are still thinking in terms of having NASA/ESA pay them to do everything.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c… Two per “side” with 4 sides, which would be 8 and the two ends with docking ports. The length could support two. Berthing ports is because the Cygnus uses berthing not docking. Each time they bring up cargo just plug it in. Once it is empty use it a commercial rental space.
I scribbled a drawing..
not sure that I would items next to each other, but that is me.
however, at the least, they should rotate a level of ports 45 degrees. That at least gives a bit more space.
If they build such a thing for Gateway, I’d expect them to pitch it to the ISS program as well.
they are working that design pretty hard…they have used it “modestly” to orbit raise the space station…they are going to make some money off of this
wrong again. Bigelow genesis 1 and 2, and they are STILL up there.