Evening space station cargo launch planned

An United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is scheduled to liftoff from Cape Canaveral on Friday.

Pushed as long as it could, postponing the launch three times from its initial 5:55 p.m. planned time, until finally giving in to the bad weather at 6:14 p.m., 11 minutes before the final chance.

This will be the maiden voyage of the enhanced Cygnus spacecraft and the first time Orbital ATK will use ULA’s Atlas V rocket for a mission.

A Friday launch would mark the return to flight for the Cygnus after an Antares rocket carrying another Cygnus to the orbiting outpost exploded just after launch in October 2014, destroying the cargo ship and sidelining these kinds of missions.

The space agency was looking to get back on track with the first US shipment to the International Space station in almost eight months, but thick clouds and rain prevented an unmanned Atlas rocket from lifting off at dusk with 7,400 pounds of critical supplies. While Orbital has made successful runs to the station before, exploding on the pad even once is no way to keep the customer happy.

Orbital ATK plans to resume operations of its Antares rocket in 2016. If the launch is scrubbed again on Friday, favorable weather conditions for launch are 30% on Saturday and 40% on Sunday. This will be the Virginia-based company’s fourth operational mission to the ISS for NASA under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract. 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.

Additionally, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket blew up shortly after leaving the ground in June this year. A Russian resupply mission, in fact, is scheduled just before Christmas. 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.