Meet Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft.

This uncrewed, cargo resupply vehicle for the International Space Station was developed under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation System program and first flew on September 18th, 2013 in its Standard configuration.

This was a smaller version than the Enhanced Cygnus that flies today.

Cygnus is designed to be launched by multiple rockets has been taken to orbit on all four variants of Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket and by two United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets.

Flying from both Florida and Virginia, Cygnus is the only ISS vehicle that launches from more than one spaceport on Earth.

For most missions, Northrop Grumman names the Cygnus after someone influential in space exploration.

Past spacecraft have been named for Kalpana Chawla and Rick Husband, who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia accident, astronaut Roger Chaffee, who died in the Apollo 1 fire, Moonwalkers Alan Bean, John Young, and Gene Cernan, and NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, whose handwritten calculations enabled the first U.S. human orbital flight of John Glenn on February 20th, 1962.

Northrop Grumman named this spacecraft after Piers Sellers, in celebration of his role in assembling the International Space Station

Planned space station research supported by this mission includes:

• a study that examines the effects of a drug on breast and prostate cancer cells
• a new combustion facility
• an investigation from Colgate-Palmolive that will leverage the acceleration of skin aging in microgravity to help create and validate an engineered tissue model to serve as a platform for testing potential products to protect aging skin
• a demonstration of a lithium-ion secondary battery capable of safe, stable operation under extreme temperatures and in a vacuum environment
• new hydrogen sensors that will be tested for the space station’s oxygen generation system
• a system that will test hydroponic and aeroponic techniques for plant growth and allow scientists to observe root growth through video and still images

Image credit: NASA

The Antares rocket was designed to serve NASA's cargo launch market need for a resupply vehicle to the International Space Station.

Originally named Taurus II, it is an expendable rocket developed and built by Orbital Sciences and is now owned and operated by Northrop Grumman.

It has only launched Cygnus crafts to the Station but is available on the wider commercial market.

Somewhat unique in the rocket world, it uses a liquid fueled first stage and a solid propellant second stage. Most rockets use liquid fueled second stages as it is far easier to get a perfect initial orbit with liquid propellant engines than with solid propellant rockets.

Antares has four variants, the current being the Antares 230+ which flew for the first time on October 17th, 2016.

Antares 230+:

Height: 42.5 m / 139 ft
Diameter: 3.9 m / 13 ft
Mass: 289,000 kg / 657,000 lb
Payload to LEO: 8,000 kg / 18,000 lb

First stage:
Engine: 2 x RD-181
Thrust: 3,844 kN / 864,000 lbf (total)
Fuel: Liquid Oxygen / RP-1 kerosene
Burn time: 215 seconds

Second stage - Castor 30XL:
Engine: Solid Rocket Motor
Thrust: 474 kN / 107,000 lbf
Propellant: Hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene / aluminium
Burn time: 156 seconds

Image: NASA

The Mid Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) is a commercial space launch facility located at the southern tip of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

MARS began in July 2003 as a joint venture between Virginia and Maryland.

The first rocket launch from MARS occurred on December 16th, 2006 and was an Orbital Sciences Minotaur I rocket with the TacSat-2/GeneSat-1 payload.

To date, MARS has hosted the four Antares rocket variants, the Minotaur I, Minotaur V, and ALV X-1 rockets.

The Minotaurs and Antares were at first Orbital Sciences rockets and ALV X-1 was an ATK rocket. With the merger of Orbital Science and ATK into Orbital ATK, and Orbital ATK's subsequent purchase by Northrop Grumman, Northrop Grumman now technically owns all of the rockets (or at least their designs) that have ever flown from MARS.

After launch, Cygnus will spend a few days boosting itself up to the International Space Station. When it arrives, two crew members will grab it with the Station's robotic arm, Canadarm2, and berth it to the Earth-facing, or Nadir, port on the Unity module.

Unity, also called Node-1, was the second module of the ISS to be launched. Taken to orbit on the STS-88 mission of Shuttle Endeavour, Unity was joined to the Russian Zarya ("dawn") module on December 6th, 1998.

The Unity nadir port hosted two Space Shuttle dockings on the STS-97 and STS-98 missions of the Shuttles Endeavour and Atlantis in December 2000 and February 2001.

Since December 2015, it has been the only berthing port used for the Cygnus cargo spacecraft.

Picture: The Unity module (no solar panels), with its nadir port visible in its center, is joined via spacewalk (astronaut visible to right of where Unity and Zarya connect) to the Zarya module during STS-88 in December 1998. Credit: NASA