The 30-minute launch window is rescheduled to open at 5:33 p.m. Friday.
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NASA contractors had two unsuccessful launches, one in the US-state of Virginia in October 2014 and another at Florida’s Cape Canaveral, the site of the current launch attempt, in June 2015.
Weather conditions remain iffy for the launch of a cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The rocket is created to carry the Orbital ATK’s uncrewed Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station.
You can watch this launch live on NASA TV or on the NASA UStream channel (I usually use the latter).
Friday’s weather forecast isn’t much better, only 30 percent favorable.
Orbital’s newest Cygnus capsule – named after the swan constellation – holds food, clothes, Christmas presents, spacewalking gear, high-pressure nitrogen and oxygen tanks for the air supply, and science experiments. This will be the Virginia-based company’s fourth operational mission to the ISS for NASA under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.
Orbital is competing against privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada Corp. for follow-on station cargo delivery contracts, now due to be awarded in January.
Welcome message to the ISS from Orbital Sciences. While it’s very exciting, there’s a decent amount of pressure for this mission to succeed – Universe Today reports that “a string of three cargo mission mishaps over the past year resulting from a trio of launch failures by both United States and Russian rocket providers involving Orbital ATK, SpaceX and Roscosmos”. Cygnus will be attached to the space station for a month before it becomes a flaming trash receptacle.
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Two of the last four commercial supply runs, contracted by NASA, have failed.
