CRS NG-18

Cygnus NG-18 (Northrop Grumman-18) is a cargo resupply mission of the Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA. Northrop Grumman and NASA jointly developed a new space transportation system to provide commercial cargo resupply services to the International Space Station. The Cygnus cargo ship consists of two parts, a service module built in the USA based on the GEOStar platform, and a pressurized module, manufactured in France and Italy by Thales Alenia. The cargo is sent into orbit by a launcher specially developed for this purpose.