NASA said it plans to try the launch again Friday, but the weather is forecasted to be cloudy and windy then, too.
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The launch, which is set for 5:55 p.m. ET, comes after NASA suffered to two catastrophic losses in less than a year of cargo vessels bound for the International Space Station. The launch team officially concluded their efforts at 6:11 p.m. EST (23:11 GMT).
It will be America’s first supply mission to the space station since a rocket launched by NASA’s other cargo-hauling contractor, SpaceX, disintegrated soon after liftoff on June 28. A second Cygnus/Atlas V launch will take place next spring from Florida, followed by the return of operations to NASA’s Wallops Flight, Va., facility in mid-2016 where the company will continue CRS missions atop the upgraded Antares rocket.
Assuming the weather cooperates and the launch goes off as planned, the cargo craft is scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station on Sunday, December 6.
“Astronauts aboard the ISS will use the station’s robotic arm to grapple Cygnus and berth it to the Unity node of the space station”, said Orbital in a statement.
The Cygnus capsule is named after Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton, a commercial space pioneer.
Bad weather forced NASA to delay the launch of an Atlas V rocket and unmanned Cygnus spacecraft on a resupply mission to the International Space Station Thursday.
Virginia-based Orbital is modifying the Antares, replacing its AJ-26 first-stage engines with RD-181 engines, and the revamped version of the booster should be ready to fly sometime next year, company representatives have said.
Cygnus hasn’t flown since October 2014. It will stay docked for a month as supplies are shifted into the ISS and trash is thrown back on the cargo ship, after which Cygnus will move back into Earth’s atmosphere for a “destructive re-entry”, disposing about 3,000 pounds worth of waste.
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A spacesuit and some water filters are among the key hardware on board, along with science experiments, food, clothes and probably Christmas presents for some of the station’s six-person crew, including a pair participating in a yearlong mission: American Scott Kelly and Russian Mikhail Kornienko. “They’ve been relatively successful to this point”, Marco Caceres, director of space studies with consulting firm Teal Group, said before the launch.
