The launch will be by private United States space firm Orbital ATK, that had a its third cargo mission destroyed in an explosion in October 2014. Its next cargo ship, launched two months later, ended up in the Atlantic following a failure of its Falcon rocket.
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Orbital ATK will try today to launch the mission at 4:44 p.m. EST (2144 GMT) with a 30-minute launch window as NASA hopes the weather forecast would be better for acceptable conditions for launch.
The cargo ship is loaded with 7,300 pounds (3,300 kilograms) of food, science experiments, and other supplies.
The rocket holds 7,400 pounds of supplies for the International Space Station.
So far unsafe wind gusts have prevented the launch of Orbital ATK’s supply-carrying spacecraft, but the weather is bound to improve by the set launch time today.’It is Orbital ATK’s fourth commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station. Next stop: “@Space_Station”, Orbital ATK tweeted.
This launch is also Orbital’s return-to-flight mission after a cargo ship was lost previous year, when the company’s Antares rocket exploded shortly after liftoff at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Orbital ATK and SpaceX – which has a contract worth US$1.6 billion to send food and equipment to the research lab over a series of supply trips – are the only two United States companies that can send spacecraft to the ISS.
Orbital ATK and SpaceX have been roped in by NASA after it has retired its space shuttles to carry cargo to the International Space station. “#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.
This is the first time that the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V has served the space station. Boeing intends to use the Atlas V to boost the Starliner capsules it’s building to ferry astronauts to the space station beginning in 2017.
Officials from Orbital ATK said that the company has chose to replace the Antares’ first-stage engines with RD-181 engines. Following a 21-minute ascent, the “S.S. Deke Slayton II” Cygnus spacecraft was successfully deployed into its intended orbit approximately 144 miles above the Earth, inclined at 51.6 degrees to the equator.
NASA announced on Thursday that the scheduled resupply mission involving the Cygnus freighter spacecraft has been delayed because of unfavorable weather.
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Plus, Cygnus will bring several student experiments on board, five of which first took flight on earlier, failed launches over the past year, along with replacement parts for the space station and added consumables for the crew. Cygnus is also carrying 1,000 kilograms of station hardware, including some spare parts that have also started to drop to low levels on the station.
