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. According to the Spaceflight Now website, it had been scheduled to lift off Saturday at 5:10 p.m. NY time from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and then was reset for 5:33 p.m. before the launch was suspended. Forecasters say there’s only a 20 percent chance the weather will cooperate.
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High wind has forced another delay for the first USA shipment of space station supplies since spring.
Rocket/Payload: A United Launch Alliance Atlas V 401 will launch Orbital ATK’s Cygnus™ spacecraft on the initial leg of its cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
It’s the third time for Orbital ATK to delay the cargo delivery mission.
Thorp and his team will try to launch the spacecraft once again on December 5 at 5:10PM EST.
The United Launch Alliance announced that an Atlas V rocket launch was scrubbed and rescheduled for Sunday afternoon. But even the Atlas is no match for Mother Nature.
Orbital has a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to supply astronauts at the orbiting outpost but has not sent any cargo in more than a year because of an Antares rocket explosion in October 2014 that destroyed its cargo ship and the thousands of pounds of supplies on board. Christmas presents also are on board. Mark Kelly is a retired astronaut as well as an author; his Mousetronaut and Mousetronaut Goes to Mars are among seven storybooks inside the Cygnus.
In orbit, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly had to endure some teasing from his identical twin back home about the repeated delays.
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Kelly is making NASA’s first yearlong mission.
