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This morning (July 12), a private cargo ship departed from the International Space Station (ISS).
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station today at 7:01 a.m. EDT (1101 GMT) while the ISS was over the South Atlantic Ocean, ending a 5.5-month stay in orbit.
The Cygnus spacecraft — named the SS Patricia “Patty” Hilliard Robertson, after a NASA astronaut who died in a 2001 plane crash — launched Jan. 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The launch marked the start of the NG-20 mission, so named because it marks the 20th time a Cygnus has flown to the ISS for NASA.
The cargo ship arrived at the ISS two days later, delivering more than 8,200 pounds (3,720 kilograms) of supplies and scientific hardware to the space lab. And Cygnus will carry some scientific equipment on the way down, but it won’t reach the ground in one piece.
Related: Facts about Cygnus, Northrop Grumman’s cargo ship
“After undocking, the Kentucky Re-entry Probe Experiment-2 (KREPE-2), located in Cygnus, will take measurements to demonstrate how the spacecraft and its contents operate during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere,” NASA officials wrote in a preview of Friday’s departure from the ISS.
“Cygnus – filled with debris packed away by the space station crew – will be commanded to leave space on Saturday, July 13, triggering a destructive re-entry that will see the spacecraft burn up safely in Earth’s atmosphere,” they added.
Cygnus is one of three robotic cargo ships currently serving the ISS and its astronauts, along with SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and Russia’s Progress spacecraft.
Like Cygnus, Progress is designed to burn up in our skies at the end of its orbital missions. But Dragon is reusable, returning safely to Earth on parachute-assisted ocean splashdowns.