The spacecraft was originally slated to launch Thursday afternoon, but it was scrubbed due to inclement weather.
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The liftoff of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was postponed “because of wind gusts that exceeded the weather criteria for launching”, NASA said in a launch blog.
“It appears that maybe Mother Nature has played tricks on us once again”, reported NASA launch commentator Mike Curie. Forecasters say there’s only a 30 percent chance the sky will clear Friday.
“We were all really looking forward to a good launch tonight, but the ground winds did not cooperate”, Vern Thorp, ULA’s Program Manager for NASA missions said on Friday after the Cygnus launch was cancelled.
The Cygnus spacecraft will be launch atop an Alliance Atlas V rocket, and shuttle thousands of pounds of cargo to the ISS. That’s because of launch accidents by NASA’s two commercial suppliers. But it’s since picked up the slack, along with Japan. It also marks ULA’s first mission supporting ISS cargo resupply.
The Cygnus spacecraft for the OA-4 mission is the first to employ the longer, “enhanced”, PCM which can carry a greater volume of cargo than the PCM flown on previous missions, and lightweight UltraFlex arrays developed and built by Orbital ATK’s Goleta, California, facility.
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NASA normally likes to have a six-month stash of food aboard the space station, but it’s down a couple months because of the three failed flights and it will take another year to get the pantry full again. SpaceX, meanwhile, aims to restart station deliveries in January with its Falcon rockets.
