Skip to main content

This workhorse ISS spacecraft has never looked so beautiful

A Cygnus spacecraft at the ISS.
NASA

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.

Recommended Videos

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.

The Cygnus at the ISS.
NASA

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.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
‘Unexpected odor’ reported at the International Space Station
The International Space Station.

Operators of the International Space Station (ISS) were recently alerted to what was described as an “unexpected odor” emanating the Russian Progress cargo spacecraft that docked with the orbital outpost on Saturday.

After launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the Progress spacecraft brought with it about 2.5 tons of supplies and other cargo for the seven-person crew aboard the orbital outpost. The spacecraft’s arrival at the station’s Poisk module appeared to go smoothly, but when Russian cosmonauts Ivan Vagner and Aleksandr Gorbunov opened the spacecraft’s hatch, they noticed an odor along with drops of an unidentified liquid.

Read more
Space station crew had an amazing stroke of luck during Starship launch
The sixth Starship mission captured from the ISS.

The sixth Starship mission captured from the ISS. NASA / Don Pettit

NASA astronaut and current space station inhabitant Don Pettit seems to have the luck of the stars. During SpaceX’s sixth test flight of its massive Starship rocket from Boca Chica, Texas, on Tuesday, the International Space Station (ISS) just happened to be passing directly above -- some 250 miles above, to be precise -- giving keen photographer Pettit the perfect opportunity to capture the Starship’s launch.

Read more
The space station just had to pull a maneuver to avoid space debris
The International Space Station.

The International Space Station (ISS) was repositioned on Tuesday, November 19, to move it well out of the way of approaching space debris, NASA reported.

Station operators fired the thrusters on the docked Progress 89 spacecraft for just over five minutes to raise the orbit of the ISS in a maneuver that provided an extra margin of distance from a piece of orbital debris, which came from a defunct defense meteorological satellite that broke up in 2015.

Read more