Following a three-day delay caused due to bad weather, the unmanned Cygnus spacecraft blasted off from a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:44 pm EST on Sunday.
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New hardware that will support dozens of NASA investigations and other science experiments from around the world is among the more than 7,000 pounds of cargo on the way to the International Space Station aboard Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft.
Sunday’s successful launch had a 70 percent chance of liftoff.
A US shipment of much-needed groceries and other astronaut supplies is rocketing toward the International Space Station for the first time in months.
For tourists at Jetty Park, the clouds covered what they wanted to see most: the rocket’s actual launch. “We were so excited and then nothing”, said Michigander Gayle Littleson.
With six astronauts on board, the space station has dipped below NASA’s desired six-month food supply.
Also aboard the newest Cygnus capsule: clothes, toiletries, spacewalking gear, air-supply tanks and science experiments. After the launch, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, commander of the station’s six-man crew, wrote on Twitter, “Caught something good on the horizon”.
The US’ NASA agency has given commercial aerospace companies the contracts to supply the ISS. Another Cygnus mission on an Atlas V will be launched in March, after which Orbital ATK’s Antares rocket will launch at least two ISS resupply missions in the second and fourth quarters of 2016.
Cygnus will be the first USA ship to reach the station since April, though Russian Federation and Japan also fly freighters. Astronauts will use a robotic arm to grapple the spacecraft at around 1110 UTC on Wednesday, NASA said.
Orbital ATK suspended deliveries to the ISS after the crash. The companies, Orbital ATK and SpaceX, are the only two USA enterprises that can send spacecraft to the station.
The blast cost Orbital at least $200 million in lost equipment and supplies.
NASA has also contracted with Orbital ATK to fly three additional missions through 2018.
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The processing team preparing the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft for launch on December 3, 2015 poses with the SS Deke Slayton II cargo ship and twin payload enclosure fairings inside the Kennedy Space Center clean room during media visit on November 13, 2015. The space station remains the springboard to NASA’s next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars. Boeing plans to use the Atlas V to launch its commercial crew spacecraft for NASA, the Starliner, as early as 2017.
