At 12:44 p.m. EDT, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL was released from the Canadarm2 robotic arm after it detached from the Earth-facing port of the International Space Station’s Unity module. At the time of release, the space station was flying about 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

Cygnus XL successfully departed the orbiting laboratory nearly six months after arriving with about 11,000 pounds of supplies, scientific investigations, commercial products, hardware, and other cargo for NASA and its international partners.

Mission controllers will command the spacecraft to deorbit Monday, Oct. 12, carrying several thousand pounds of disposal items and other unneeded cargo into Earth’s atmosphere, where it will harmlessly burn up during re-entry. NASA will not provide coverage of the deorbit. 

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

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