1st US shipment in months flying to space station

After several days of delay due to bad weather, Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft successfully lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida yesterday (December 6, 2015), loaded with vital cargo to resupply the International Space Station.

Everything came together on the fourth launch attempt, allowing the unmanned Atlas to blast off with 7,400 pounds of space station cargo, not to mention some Christmas presents for the awaiting crew.

“This launch marks the completion of the critical first step of our go-forward plan for the CRS-1 contract to meet our commitments to NASA”, said Frank Culbertson, President of Orbital ATK’s Space System Group, in a statement. 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. It launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

Also aboard the newest Cygnus capsule: clothes, toiletries, spacewalking gear, air-supply tanks and science experiments.

After this, supplies have been arriving at the space station safely although none of them were launched from American soil. Apart from the Antares Cygnus launch a year ago, a Russian Progress ship failed to communicate with its mothership and has fallen back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere.

Cygnus carries a greater volume of cargo than craft flown on previous missions.

Cygnus is expected to reach the International Space Station by Wednesday and will remain attached for up to 60 days.

NASA has also contracted with Orbital ATK to fly three additional missions through 2018. Investigations will offer a new life science facility that will support studies on cell cultures, bacteria and other microorganisms, a microsatellite deployer and the first microsatellite that will be deployed from the space station, and experiments that will study the behavior of gases and liquids and clarify the thermo-physical properties of molten steel and evaluations of flame-resistant textiles. Today, the station has enough food and supplies to last until April, which is below the six month margin of NASA.

SpaceX is preparing its own spacecraft combination – Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon – to carry astronauts to the station in the near future.