Liftoff: First US shipment in months flying to space station

It was third time lucky today as the unmanned Orbital Sciences/ATK Cygnus CRS-4 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The rocket is carrying the Cygnus spacecraft for Orbital ATK and NASA on the initial leg of its cargo resupply mission to the ISS.

Orbital ATK hopes to complete the first successful delivery of cargo from US soil since April, the last time a Dragon reached the station.

Liftoff came after three straight days of foul weather conditions, which snapped a string of 26 consecutive Atlas missions to launch on the first attempt after being fueled.

Shortly after that failure, Orbital purchased an Atlas 5 launch from ULA to fulfill its contractual requirements to NASA to deliver cargo to the ISS.

In the near future, Boeing and United Launch Alliance plan to use the Atlas V to launch astronauts to the station in the CST-100 Starliner for NASA’s Commercial Crew Programme.

The launch is the first for the Cygnus since the October 2014 failure of an Antares rocket shortly after liftoff from Wallops Island, Virginia.

The US’ NASA agency has given commercial aerospace companies the contracts to supply the ISS. The other company, SpaceX, was recovering from a similar launch explosion in June this year as well.

The capsule, which is loaded with more than 7,700 pounds of food, clothing, science experiments and other equipment, is due to arrive at the station on Wednesday.

The space station astronauts got to see some of the rocket contrails.

– The S.S. Deke Slayton II is now on its way to the International Space Station.

Astronauts will use the Canadian-made robotic arm to grapple the spacecraft at round 6:10 am (1110 GMT), NASA stated. “Cygnus 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”.

Orbital ATK Cygnus CRS-4 spacecraft poised for blastoff to ISS on ULA Atlas V on December 3, 2015 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

“I just can’t emphasize enough how it’s important to us, on board ISS, to have a regular cadence of resupply flights”, Kirk Shireman, the program manager for ISS, said during the briefing. “With its solar arrays deployed for power production, the Cygnus will fly autonomously to catch up to the station as ground controllers maintain a close watch from Earth”.

The Cygnus cargo includes almost 1,200 kilograms of crew supplies, topping up stockpiles of consumables there that, in some cases, have started to fall to low levels.

The Atlas V rocket has proved consistently reliable since its maiden launch in 2002, suffering only one significant issue in 2007 when a valve leak in the upper stage caused it to shut down early.

The Cygnus is carrying a new batch of kid’s books for the astronauts to read from the station, and even some Christmas presents for the astronauts. “They’re probably excited about their stockings coming up, too”.