Weather improves for commercial space station delivery

Gusting winds Saturday of the planned launch of a rocket loaded with supplies bound for the.

High winds and bad weather are keeping a cargo supply spacecraft from launching and reaching the International Space Station. At the station, astronauts will unload 3,349.0 kilograms (7,383.3 pounds) of cargo before reloading the spacecraft with garbage for a destructive reentry in January.

Orbital ATK was able to mount a second supply mission so quickly after last year’s rocket failure by collaborating with the US launch provider United Launch Alliance (ULA), which provided the Atlas V rocket that lofted Cygnus into space Sunday evening.

“Liftoff, on the shoulders of Atlas”, Nasa spokesman Mike Curie said as the unmanned spacecraft blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida atop a white Atlas V rocket at 4:44 pm (2144 GMT). The SM is assembled and tested at Orbital ATK’s Dulles, Virginia, satellite manufacturing facility and incorporates systems from Orbital ATK’s flight-proven LEOStar™ and GEOStar™ satellite product lines. Shipper Orbital ATK is using another company’s rocket because its own, the Antares, has been grounded since 2014.

Under the CRS contract with NASA, Orbital ATK will deliver approximately 62,000 pounds (28,000 kilograms) of cargo to the ISS over 10 missions through 2018.

“This launch begins a high tempo of cargo resupply missions supporting the International Space Station”, said Culbertson.

Weather is only 30 percent go for launch. Launch failures have sidelined both of NASA’s commercial suppliers; United Launch Alliance’s trusty Atlas V was called into service to get the supply chain moving again. “Caught something good on the horizon”, commander Scott Kelly reported in a tweet. 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.

Orbital ATK has named the OA-4 Cygnus the “S.S. Deke Slayton II”, upholding the tradition of naming each Cygnus in honor of astronauts. 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.

The launch of Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft was supposed to occur on December 4, but weather circumstances forced NASA to delay the event to December 6. The vehicle is also carrying Microsoft HoloLens headsets that will let experts on Earth help station crewmembers with complicated tasks (originally set to be sent on the failed SpaceX Dragon cargo ship launch in June) and a safety jetpack for spacewalks. The entire launch to spacecraft separation took 21 minutes and the Cygnus is now in an orbit at an altitude of 124 mi (200 km) and an inclination of 51.6º.