In this photo provided by the United Launch Alliance, an Atlas V rocket carrying the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft, is rolled from the Vertical Integration Facility to a launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015.
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A USA shipment of much-needed groceries and other astronaut supplies rocketed toward the International Space Station for the first time in months Sunday, reigniting NASA’s commercial delivery service.
Poor weather scrubbed launch attempts Thursday and Friday, and caused a third try on Saturday to be postponed.
The fourth time was the charm, with the Atlas V rocket lifting off at 4:44 p.m. EST and flawlessly ascending through overcast skies.
Orbital bought another company’s rocket, the veteran Atlas V, for this supply mission.
The Cygnus is carrying more than 7,000 pounds of equipment and supplies for the six-member crew of the space station.
The launching mission will be operated by the private United States space firm Orbital ATK, NASA said. This capability, combined with the flexibility of ULA’s Atlas V, enabled Orbital ATK to carry out the mission on a shortened schedule to be responsive to NASA’s ISS logistics requirements.
After a 21 minute ascent, the Deke Slayton II was released into orbit from the Atlas V’s Centaur second stage to begin its rendezvous with the space station.
Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital, an aerospace and defense company with annual revenues of about $4.4 billion, hopes to return its own Antares rocket to flight in May, following an October 2014 launch accident. It has launched essential supplies and NASA gear to the International Space Station.
NASA is anxious to get its commercial supply chain moving again for the International Space Station. The American space agency will attempt to have the space cargo ship blast off into space on Sunday, Dec. 6, instead of the original schedule date of Dec. 4.
Today’s launch was the ninth and final Atlas 5 flight of the year, the 12th and last for United Launch Alliance in 2015. Apart from the Antares Cygnus launch previous year, a Russian Progress ship failed to communicate with its mothership and has fallen back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere. “#YearInSpace”, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who commands the station’s six-man crew and is flying a one-year mission to the outpost, wrote on Twitter after launch.
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“We had a pretty clean flight, too, everything happened right on time…”
