At the time of ignition, the station was flying just off the east coast of the U.S.
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This is the first flight in a series that will include a crew change in addition to a Russian progress cargo craft leaving and another one coming to the station.
Supplies at the station are running low due to several failed delivery runs and botched rocket launches.
Following liftoff, the Atlas quickly disappeared into cloud cover.
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, according to Orbital ATK. In fact, since July 1950 this United Launch Alliance/Orbital ATK mission represents launch number 3,522 for this team! Liftoff was at 4:44 p.m. EST.
“We were within 100 meters of the apogee and perigee we needed in order to get into orbit safely”. The space station has been continuously occupied since November 2000. The first two burns are planned for later tonight.
Astronauts will use the Canadian-made robotic arm to grapple the spacecraft at around 6:10 am (1110 GMT), NASA said.
The Cygnus is loaded with 7,383 pounds of provisions, not counting packing materials, for the station and its resident crews.
“I was an astronaut for 16 years”.
NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, from his vantage point aboard the International Space Station, photographed the launch of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. “That’s a lot of people to keep alive and fed and busy with science”.
The spacecraft will remain connected to the station through most of January as astronauts first unpack the new gear and then load some 3,000 pounds of used and unneeded equipment into the Cygnus along with trash.
The rocket lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station after three days of delay due to poor weather. After that, however, the company hopes to return to putting the Cygnus atop Antares rockets and launching it from the Orbital ATK launch site at Wallops Island, Va. “We are the World’s Premier Gateway to Space”.
“We had a pretty clean flight, too, everything happened right on time…”
“It’s wonderful to fly on ULA and the Atlas with their unbeliebable track record”.
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Now, all the spacesuits, along with jetpacks and high pressure oxygen tanks and nitrogen tanks will be replenished from this cargo resupply mission, which have not been replaced since the last space shuttle mission in 2011. Our launch success today proves how decades of professional collaboration between the 45th SW, NASA, SMC, ULA and all of our other mission partners continues to shape the future of America’s space operations.
