NASA Astronauts Capture Cygnus With Robotic Arm; Installation Soon

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft is pictured attached to the Canadarm2 robotic arm, moments after NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick maneuvered the robotic arm to capture the spacecraft ahead of installation to the Earth-facing port of the Unity module. Credit: NASA TV
Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft is pictured attached to the Canadarm2 robotic arm moments after NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick maneuvered the robotic arm to capture the spacecraft ahead of installation to the Earth-facing port of the Unity module. Credit: NASA TV

At 3:11 a.m. EDT, NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, with NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps as backup, captured Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft using the International Space Station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm as the station was flying about 260 miles over the South Atlantic Ocean.

Mission control in Houston will use the Canadarm2 robotic arm to position Cygnus to its installation orientation and then will guide it in for installation on the station’s Unity module Earth-facing port.

NASA will provide coverage of the spacecraft’s installation beginning at 4:30 a.m. on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, YouTube, X, Facebook, and the agency’s website.

NASA’s Northrop Grumman 21st commercial resupply mission launched at 11:02 a.m. Aug. 4 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida carrying 8,200 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory.


Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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