Under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, Orbital ATK designed, acquired, built, and assembled these components: Antares, a medium-class launch vehicle; Cygnus, an advanced spacecraft using a Pressurized Cargo Module (PCM) provided by industrial partner Thales Alenia Space and a Service Module based on the Orbital GEOStar satellite bus.

Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems confirmed on 23 February 2021 that Thales Alenia Space of Turin, Italy, will fabricate two additional Pressurized Cargo Modules (PCMs) for a pair of forthcoming Commercial Resupply Services-2 missions.

However, a fire alarm resulted in an evacuation of Northrop Grumman's control center, and the flight was postponed to the next day.

The deploy failure was attributed to acoustic blanket debris being lodged into solar-array mechanisms during a stage separation event.

[14] The new experiments arriving at the orbiting laboratory will inspire future scientists and explorers, and provide valuable insight for researchers.