Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL robotic spacecraft departed the International Space Station today (Oct. 9) after a six-month stay. Northrop Grumman’s unmanned Cygnus XL freighter was released by the station’s massive Canadarm2 robotic arm today at 12:44 p.m. EDT (1644 GMT), as the duo flew 260 miles (418 kilometers) over the Pacific Ocean. The departing vehicle is the second from Northrop Grumman’s “Cygnus XL” line of freighters, but the 24th Cygnus of any type to carry cargo to the orbital laboratory. The company named it SS Steven R. Nagel, after a NASA astronaut who flew on four space shuttle missions in the 1980s and 1990s. Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo ship departs the International Space Station on October 9, 2026. (Image credit: NASA) The SS Steven R. Nagel launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on April 11, transporting 11,000 pounds (4,990 kilograms) of scientific equipment and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). It’s also dragging some stuff along: thousands of pounds of trash, which will burn up along with Cygnus when it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere on Sunday (Oct. 11). That’s the usual destination for three of the four ISS robotic resupply vehicles in operation today: Cygnus XL, Russia’s Progress and Japan’s HTV-X. Only SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule is reusable; concludes its orbital flights with parachute-assisted splashdowns in the ocean. You might like that Cygnus XL also differs from Dragon in another way: The Northrop Grumman vehicle does not dock to the ISS on its own. Rather, it is grabbed by Canadarm2, which docks it at the station and moves it in other ways as needed. During today’s operation, which was commanded from the ground, Canadarm2 separated the SS Steven R. Nagel from the Earth-facing port of the ISS Unity module and then maneuvered it into position for release at 12:45 p.m., NASA astronaut Luke Delaney monitored these activities from the ISS. “We are really excited to have had the SS Stephen R. Nagel, and all the science, research and critical hardware on board,” Delaney said shortly after the Cygnus launch. “We thank all the teams who came together to make this complex operation a success, from assembly, launch, docking and now undocking,” he added. “Thank you for continuing to push the boundaries of human knowledge and onboard experiments, to include research during this deorbit phase. These are the building blocks of the future of space exploration.” And about that deorbit science: The SS Stephen R. Nagel carries heat shield prototypes that will be tested during the freighter’s fiery reentry. ISS.
