After an eight-month hiatus, a USA supply ship is en-route to the International Space Station following Sunday’s successful liftoff of an Orbital ATK Cygnus cargo ship aboard a hired Atlas 5 rocket.
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“As we celebrate Orbital ATK’s success with its fourth cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station, we look forward to the next milestones of our other commercial partners, including commercial crew launches from American soil in the near future”.
Within minutes of the launch, astronaut Scott Kelly posted a picture on Twitter of the rocket headed to where he is on the International Space Station anxiously awaiting its arrival.
The liftoff Sunday atop the Atlas V rocket went smoothly, with no flaws or problems after a launch delay of several days due to bad weather. Shipper Orbital ATK is using another company’s rocket because its own, the Antares, has been grounded since 2014.
Orbital ATK’s upgraded Antares launch vehicle remains on schedule for a full-power hot-fire test in early 2016 and resumption of flight operations from the Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia in the second quarter of the year. Cygnus will deliver vital equipment, supplies and scientific experiments to the ISS as part of its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA.
At just over 8 tons, Cygnus is the heaviest payload to launch atop an Atlas V rocket.
The U.S. shipment contains food, clothes, toiletries, spacewalking gear, science experiments and Christmas presents.
The rocket holds 7,400 pounds of supplies, all packed into a capsule named Cygnus after the swan constellation. Orbital ATK suspended deliveries to the ISS after the crash.
Today’s launch was the ninth and final Atlas 5 flight of the year, the 12th and last for United Launch Alliance in 2015. Astronauts will use a robotic arm to grapple the spacecraft at around 1110 UTC on Wednesday, NASA said. 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 Cygnus spacecraft will dock at the ISS for two and half days.
NASA is hoping the weather finally cooperates for a space station delivery already running late.
Cygnus carries a greater volume of cargo than craft flown on previous missions.
For the past six months NASA has relied on Russian and Japanese rockets to bring supplies to and from the space station.
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“Commercial space is going to happen”, Shireman said.
