Resupply Mission of ISS is delayed due poor weather conditions

An Orbital Cygnus spacecraft, perched atop an Atlas 5 rocket from United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is a joint venture between, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, had been due to take off at 5:55p.m. EST.

An uncrewed, privately-built, cargo-carrying spacecraft loaded down with thousands of pounds of supplies for NASA is expected to launch atop a commercial rocket to the International Space Station Friday, after bad weather delayed its first launch attempt Thursday.

Today, Orbital ATK is getting back into launching spacecraft again, after being grounded for more than a year. The cargo craft has been packed with 7,000 pounds of NASA supplies, science equipment and research bound for the ISS.

Liftoff was rescheduled until 5:33 p.m. on Friday.

Also aboard are two Microsoft HoloLens headsets, which will provide station crew – and onlookers in ground control centers – with digitally enhanced images of whatever the astronauts are looking at.

Orbital’s last grocery run ended in flames seconds after liftoff previous year.

Investigators blamed the botched launch on a defective turbopump in one of Antares’ two main engines which was a refurbished Soviet-era motor constructed by Aerojet.

Orbital ATK plans to return its Antares rockets to flight in 2016.

But even the weather forecast for Friday is only 30 percent favorable for takeoff, NASA said, according to Yahoo News. But if the spacecraft launches later in its 30-minute launch window, its rendezvous with the station will slip to Tuesday (Dec. 8), NASA officials explained in the update.

This time, Orbital ATK is using United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket for the launch, while it upgrades its Antares rocket, which failed due to a problem with its reconditioned Ukrainian engine. The space agency will telecast the launch attempt live.

The six space station astronauts have gone without US shipments since April.

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The mission also marks Orbital’s first launch from Florida, and the first cargo mission to the ISS from American soil since SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was lost in June.