However, the third operational mission, Cygnus Orb-3, was unsuccessful due to catastrophic failure of its Antares 130 launch vehicle.

The anomaly forced the Centaur upper stage of the rocket to fire for approximately one minute longer than planned, using reserved fuel margin, but did not significantly impact payload orbital insertion.

[13][14] Cygnus OA-6 is the fifth of ten flights by Orbital ATK under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

[4][15] In keeping with an Orbital ATK tradition, this Cygnus spacecraft is named the S.S. Rick Husband after the NASA astronaut who commanded the Space Shuttle Columbia's ill-fated STS-107 mission in 2003.

The schedules in early 2017 are dynamic, due to the first crewed commercial flights (SpaceX, Boeing) to ISS.