Orb-2 carried a swarm of small satellites. Twenty-eight commercial imaging CubeSats were delivered to the station for later release, part of a constellation intended to photograph the entire land surface of the Earth every day — an ambition that would have been implausible before small satellites became cheap.
Deploying them from the station has advantages and drawbacks: the orbit is fixed and relatively low, so the satellites re-enter within a few years, but the ride is inexpensive and frequent. Several companies built their early constellations this way.
The mission also delivered around 1,500 kilograms of crew supplies, spare parts and scientific hardware, including experiments on flame behaviour and materials processing.
The spacecraft was named for Janice Voss, a five-flight Shuttle astronaut and engineer who had died in 2012, continuing the fleet's practice of naming each vehicle for a figure from the programme's past.
It departed after five weeks. The flight was routine, and by mid-2014 the station was receiving deliveries from American, Russian, European and Japanese vehicles — the most redundant supply arrangement it has ever had.
