Congratulations to the NASA and the team at Orbital for the successful launch of a brand new cargo delivery system. Orbital developed the Cygnus advanced maneuvering spacecraft to demonstrate cargo delivery services under a NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) Space Act Agreement. In addition to the COTS development and demonstration program, Orbital will utilize Cygnus to perform ISS resupply flights under the Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) contract.
Orbital will conduct eight missions to deliver approximately 20,000 kilograms of cargo to the ISS.
The Cygnus system is a low-risk design incorporating elements drawn from Orbital and its partners’
existing, flight-proven spacecraft technologies. Cygnus consists of a common service module and a
pressurized cargo module. Cygnus will carry crew supplies, spares and scientific experiments to the ISS.
The service module incorporates avionics systems from Orbital’s flight-proven LEOStar™ and
GEOStar™ satellite product lines plus propulsion and power systems from our GEOStar
communications satellites.
The pressurized cargo module is based on the Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM), developed by
Thales Alenia Space for NASA.
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