Northrop Grumman selected to provide cargo services for final phase of ISS

BREMEN, Germany — NASA has selected Northrop Grumman to provide cargo delivery services to the International Space Station once a spacecraft designed to deorbit the station is installed.

NASA issued a contracting notice Nov. 21 stating it would issue a sole-source award to Northrop Grumman for two Cygnus missions, one in 2028 and the other in 2029, under its existing Commercial Resupply Services 2 contract. The value of the award was redacted.

NASA said it chose Northrop Grumman rather than compete the missions with SpaceX, which also has a CRS-2 contract, because of technical requirements. The Cygnus spacecraft is berthed to the ISS, while SpaceX’s Dragon docks directly to one of two ports also used by commercial crew vehicles.

One of those ports will be occupied by the United States Deorbit Vehicle, or USDV, when it arrives late this decade to support the station’s controlled deorbit. The USDV will remain docked for at least a year before the deorbit operation. With the other docking port needed for commercial crew vehicles, no ports will be available for Cargo Dragon missions.

That constraint does not affect Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, which is grappled by the station’s robotic arm and attached to one of two separate berthing ports. “NG is the only CRS-2 provider currently capable of attaching to the ISS via a berthing port, which means NG is the only responsible source that can provide resupply services after the USDV arrives and docks to the ISS,” NASA stated in a justification document.

Cygnus can also provide other needed capabilities, including disposing of trash and reboosting the station’s orbit. NASA said those factors justified a sole-source award to Northrop Grumman for the two missions.

CRS-2 originally had a third supplier, Sierra Space, developing the Dream Chaser vehicle, also designed to berth with the station. However, the company and NASA revised its CRS-2 contract in September to cover only a single test flight that will not go to the ISS.

In addition to its NASA cargo work, Cygnus may also be in line for a European Space Agency award. ESA issued a call for proposals Oct. 3 for a commercial cargo service to deliver 4,900 to 5,000 kilograms of cargo to the ISS by 2028. The cargo would fulfill ESA’s share of Common System Operations Costs for the ISS beyond existing barter arrangements with NASA.

“Through this initiative, ESA intends to procure commercial cargo delivery services to ISS, providing a strategic offset that secures ESA’s astronaut flight opportunities and ISS utilization while also building European capabilities in low Earth orbit logistics,” ESA said in the call, first reported by European Spaceflight.

The requirements appear to favor Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus, as the new Cygnus XL can deliver 5,000 kilograms of cargo, exceeding other systems. The announcement does not require the spacecraft to be European, but the Cygnus pressurized cargo module is built by Thales Alenia Space in Italy.

“This is exactly to ensure that this cargo can be transported, but using another service,” ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said when asked about the procurement on the sidelines of the ESA ministerial conference here Nov. 25. The contract would provide ESA “a barter element in our hands for astronaut flights that are being prepared or in the pipeline.”