Bad weather conditions delay U.S. shipment to International Space Station

According to NASA blogs, Orbital ATK, NASA commercial partner, is launching its fourth contracted mission to the International Space Station today under the Commercial Resupply Services contract. If there is a scrub today due to the weather, there is only a 30 per cent chance of clear launch conditions on Thursday.

This mission is meant to bring more than 7,000 of supplies and equipment, packed into an Orbital ATK Cygnus capsule, to the six astronauts aboard the space station. They concluded that the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft, United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, and the personnel were ready for launch.

Bad weather for Atlas and Cygnus An Air Force weather forecast shows precipitation and clouds over Cape Canaveral at the time of launch. The next scheduled launch window has been set for Friday at 1555PT (2355UTC), wind and weather permitting.

But NASA has said it is confident in the two companies and is eager to resume flying cargo missions to the space station, which has been resupplied by other countries.

Orbital is competing against privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, and Sierra Nevada Corp. for follow-on station cargo delivery contracts, now due to be awarded in January. The meeting included senior NASA, the U.S. Air Force, Orbital ATK and United Launch Alliance managers. Even with the resumption of American shipments, it will take a year for the 250-mile-high pantry to be as full as it was before the string of accidents, he told reporters.

The other company, SpaceX, was recovering from a similar launch explosion in June this year as well. Although, this time the company orbital will be using rocket from another company United Launch Alliance to meet its contractual requirements with NASA. The Atlas V rocket has never launched station-bound cargo before.

Orbital accelerated plans to outfit Antares with new engines and purchased two Atlas rocket rides to fly Cygnus capsules to the station.

MARROW: an experiment led by researchers at the University of Ottawa, to study how microgravity affects bone marrow and its cells, to benefit not only the astronauts who inhabit the space station, but also those with limited mobility here on Earth.