Space Station First: All Docking Ports Fully Occupied, 8 Spacecraft on Orbit - NASA
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For the first time in International Space Station history, all eight docking ports aboard the orbital outpost are occupied following the reinstallation of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft to the Earth-facing port of the station’s Unity module. The eight spacecraft attached to the complex are: two SpaceX Dragons, Cygnus XL, JAXA’s (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) HTV-X1, two Roscosmos Soyuz crew spacecraft, and two Progress cargo ships.

For the first time in International Space Station history, all eight docking ports aboard the orbital outpost are occupied following the reinstallation of Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft to the Earth-facing port of the station’s Unity module.

This milestone follows the reattachment of the Cygnus XL spacecraft … which was removed last week by the robotics officer at the agency’s Mission Control Center in Houston using the space station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm … to provide appropriate clearance for the arriving crewed Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft on Nov. 27.

I heard NASA talking about this Cygnus XL operation at some online press conference a month or two ago. Pretty sure they said that the Cygnus XL wasn’t actually in the way of the Soyuz, but they were moving it out of the way just to give more margin of clearance.

NG-23 is the first flight of a Cygnus XL vehicle. It was originally berthed on 2025-09-18 after a slight delay in orbit.

  • burble@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4·
    3 days ago

    I don’t think we’ll ever see more vehicle types at once at the ISS. This is 6, counting Crew Dragon, Cargo Dragon, HTV-X, Cygnus XL, Soyuz, and Progress. You can’t beat that without more docking ports. The first Axiom module might effectively replace a CBM with an IDA while it’s berthed, but I think the plan is for that module to split off once the first Axiom hab module shows up with more ports.