After a week of technical and scheduling delays, Orbital Sciences (News - Alert) Corporation's first Cygnus spacecraft successfully rendezvoused and berthed with the International Space Station (ISS) on the morning of Sept. 29, 2013. The rendezvous is the culminating act for NASA's commercial cargo development program and opens the door for Orbital to start making regular delivery runs to the space station.

NASA and Orbital executives were delighted with all aspects of the operation, with NASA Commercial Crew & Cargo Program manager Alan Lindenmoyer saying Orbital was "good to go" for the first Orbital CRS (Cargo Resupply Service) mission penciled in for a December launch.

"They've got a demonstrated system that can certainly deliver," Lindenmoyer said at a post-berthing press conference."I see no delays proceeding towards the next mission."

G. David Low, the first Cygnus spacecraft, will remain attached to ISS until around Oct. 22 while about 700 kilograms of supplies and scientific experiments are unloaded and the empty cargo module is then filled up with trash. The spacecraft will be detached and released for a destructive re-entry over the South Pacific a few days later.

Launched on Sept. 18 from Wallops Island, Va., on board an Antares rocket, the Cygnus rendezvous and berthing was originally scheduled for Sept. 22, but a "data format issue" (software bug) arose when astronauts aboard ISS tried to communicate with the spacecraft for the first time. A one-line patch was written and uploaded to Cygnus in about a day, but officials decided to delay a berthing until after a new space station crew arrived on station on Sept. 25.

Future flights of Cygnus will initially deliver up to 2,000 kilograms of cargo per trip, with improvements expected to boost that to 2,700 kilograms by flight 4. Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract for eight ISS supply missions. The company expects to make its first paying trip in December, then to conduct two to three flights per year through 2015, keeping the NASA's Wallops Island busy. A follow-on ISS supply contract is expected to be released shortly to keep ISS going through at least 2020.

NASA now has two American-flagged commercial systems to deliver cargo to ISS, a goal it sought when it launched the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program in January 2006. The agency needs a replacement for cargo delivery with the retirement of the Space Shuttle program.

Under COTS, NASA fostered commercial innovation for cargo runs to the space station by using Space Act Agreements to partner with U.S. companies.   Participants Orbital and SpaceX (News - Alert) were given flexibility in design so long as they met the requirements for delivering cargo safely to the station and were paid only upon completing specific benchmarks – a far different way of doing business than traditional cost-plus contracting.

For under the price of single space shuttle mission, NASA seed funding provided Orbital and SpaceX has helped in developing two commercial cargo systems with two new launch vehicles, two new spacecraft, spacecraft operational facilities at both companies, and a "wet" pad at Wallops Island.