NASA was scheduled to launch Thursday at 5:55 p.m. ET a rocket carrying supplies for the International Space Station.
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The launch of the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS), planned for Thursday, has been cancelled because of bad weather conditions, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said.
It was not immediately announced when the next launch attempt would be if the weather does not cooperate again Friday evening.
NASA issued a new launch time for 4:33 p.m. CST on Friday.
It’s also the United Launch Alliance’s first-ever resupply mission to the orbital outpost.
The Cygnus spacecraft for the OA-4 mission is the first to employ the longer, “enhanced”, PCM which can carry a greater volume of cargo than the PCM flown on previous missions, and lightweight UltraFlex arrays developed and built by Orbital ATK’s Goleta, California, facility.
Ukraine-related trade sanctions enacted a year ago ban US military use of the RD-180 engines.
Orbital, which competes against privately-owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada Corp for follow-on cargo delivery contracts, is counting on ULA’s Atlas rocket to send its next two Cygnus capsules to the station, a $100 billion laboratory that flies about 250 miles (400 km) above Earth.
But poor weather at the seaside Florida launch site forced ULA to postpone the launch. But it’s since picked up the slack, along with Japan. A fire and explosion in the old Russian rocket engines doomed the October 2014 flight, the company’s fourth resupply mission. NASA normally likes to have a six-month stash of food aboard the space station, but it’s down a couple months because of the three failed flights. The company’s Falcon rocket ended up in the Atlantic at the end of June, along with a new docking port and everything else destined for the space station.
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If no other supplies reach the station, the crew will hit reserve supplies of food in April 2016, NASA said.
