Cygnus

Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus freighter. Photo: NASANASA is breathing a sigh of relief following a successful demonstration in which a docked Cygnus freighter was temporarily converted into a booster engine for the International Space Station. The favorable test suggests NASA has the means to adjust the space station’s orbit should Russia decide to leave the orbital outpost, as the Kremlin has threatened to do. The limited reboost test happened on Saturday June 25 and it lasted for 5 minutes and 1 second, according to NASA.…

For the first time since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the United States now has the ability to control the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) without Russian cooperation after a Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully boost the space lab into a higher orbit.Weighing over 444 tonnes and still growing, the ISS has been in orbit since 1998, so it's easy to take this massive space station for granted as it orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 250…

The Cygnus space freighter from Northrop Grumman, with its prominent cymbal-shaped solar arrays, is pictured attached to the International Space Station’s Unity module as the orbiting lab flew 263 miles above the coast of Lisbon, Portugal. Credit: NASAHuman research and space botany were the main research activities aboard the International Space Station yesterday, with a goal of helping <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div…