The first Cygnus mission carried 1,543 pounds of cargo while the last five missions have been much larger, averaging over 8,200 pounds of cargo. For future missions, Cygnus will expand to over 11,000 pounds of pressurized cargo space, increasing the productivity of the missions and opportunity for scientific breakthroughs.

“We are continually looking at ways to be more efficient, both through the build process and in what the spacecraft provides to the customer,” said Scott Duffin, Commercial Resupply Services program manager. “One of those ways is maximizing resource usage by having the vehicle perform multiple functions.”

Once the cargo haul is unloaded by the crew, Cygnus’s job is far from over. The vehicle acts as an extended science lab space for the months it remains docked to the station. And during the NG-17 mission, Cygnus demonstrated a new capability: reboosting the station to keep it in its proper orbit.

“Even the end of Cygnus’s journey has been retooled for different purposes to reduce the need for extra missions,” said Scott. “For example, Cygnus has performed six missions for NASA’s Spacecraft Fire Safety Demonstration Project, which investigates how fires grow and spread in space.”

Today, the technology we pioneered to create Cygnus is being repurposed, like for the Habitatation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) we are building for NASA’s Gateway space station in deep space. The most distant human outpost ever built, this first-of-its-kind module draws upon decades of lessons learned from Cygnus’s mission experience. Cygnus is also evolving for future logistics services for commercial space stations, smoothly transitioning our experienced people and proven technology for new applications, saving on the time and investment that new programs typically demand.