Atlas V rocket lifted off with Cygnus Cargo Spaceship to ISS

Weather delayed a rocket launch at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station again on Saturday afternoon.

A spacecraft carrying much-needed U.S. supplies has blasted off towards the International Space Station.

If the Orbital ATK capsule arrives at the space station Wednesday as planned, it will represent the first US delivery since spring. For this mission, Orbital ATK bought another company’s rocket, the Atlas V. Russian Federation also lost a supply ship earlier this year, reports WFTV9. In October 2014, an Orbital Antares rocket packed with thousands of pounds of supplies exploded seconds after takeoff.

The launch marks Orbital’s fourth scheduled mission to the orbiting outpost, as part of a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to deliver necessities to the astronauts living in space.

It was followed eight months later by a SpaceX rocket explosion, and the consecutive accidents effectively shut off the flow of United States supplies to astronauts in orbit.

Following two scrubs and a three day due to intense and wide spread rain squalls and excessive blustery winds, the third time is hopefully the charm for the Orbital ATK Cygnus resupply ship set for blastoff atop the venerable ULA Atlas V booster. “I congratulate the combined NASA, ULA and Orbital ATK team for its hard work to get us to this point, and I look forward to completing another safe and successful flight to the ISS in several days”. Liftoff occurred at 4:44 pm on the fourth launch attempt, and Orbital’s designation for the mission was – yep – number four.

It was the company’s first failure since making the first commercial space station shipment in 2012.

The spacecraft will spend more than a month attached to the space station before its destructive re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, disposing of about 3,000 pounds of trash in January. The other, SpaceX, like Orbital ATK, also had to shut down its services after its Falcon 9 rocket blew up over Port Canaveral, in June. After the launch, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, commander of the station’s six-man crew, wrote on Twitter, “Caught something good on the horizon”.

Orbital plans to use another Atlas rocket for a supply run in March, then return its own Antares rocket to flight from Virginia in May.

While acknowledging 2015 has been a hard year because of the disrupted supply chain, Shireman said commercial space is inevitable and will drive down launch costs.

There are no astronauts inside Cygnus.