[10] NASA held a pre-launch briefing for the Northrop Grumman Cygnus NG-15 cargo launch to the International Space Station (ISS) on 19 February 2021 at 16:00 UTC.

[11] On 1 February 2021, the start of Black History Month, Northrop Grumman announced the name of Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician, as the name of the Cygnus spacecraft.

[9][12] Once its mission has been completed, Cygnus will perform a safe, destructive reentry into atmosphere of Earth over the Pacific Ocean.

[16] The cargo manifest is broken down as follows: NASA provided the following breakdown of the cargo's hardware for ISS:[5] The new experiments arriving at the orbiting laboratory on the Cygnus NG-15 mission supports science from human health to high-powered computing, and utilizes the space station as a proving ground for the technologies needed for future missions to the Moon and on to Mars.

[19] ThinSat-2 Archived 25 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine: 42 satellites as part of a STEM outreach program (for grades 4-12 and through the university level) by the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority.