NASA Cygnus cargo ship blasts off to ISS on resupply mission

A USA shipment of much-needed groceries and other astronaut supplies rocketed toward the International Space Station for the first time in months Sunday, reigniting NASA’s commercial delivery service.

It launched at 4:44:57 p.m. EST Sunday on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Weather delayed a rocket launch at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station again on Saturday afternoon. SpaceX opened the commercial pipeline to the space station in 2012, a year after NASA’s shuttles retired.

Within minutes of the launch, astronaut Scott Kelly posted a picture on Twitter of the rocket headed to where he is on the International Space Station anxiously awaiting its arrival. See video of the 2014 launch. 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. Cygnus will remain attached to the station for approximately 50 days before departing with roughly 5,050 pounds (2,300 kilograms) of disposable cargo for a safe, destructive reentry over the Pacific Ocean.

If successful, this would be the first USA shipment to the space station since spring.

“We want to get going”, Frank DeMauro, a vice president with NASA’s contracted shipper, Orbital ATK, said shortly before liftoff.

Orbital ATK suspended deliveries to the ISS after the crash. The company designs, builds and delivers space, defense and aviation systems for customers around the world, both as a prime contractor and merchant supplier.

Orbital ATK is one of two private space companies NASA hired to service the space station. Cygnus’ pressurized cargo module has been extended and increases the spacecraft’s interior volume capacity by 25 percent, allowing more cargo to be delivered with each mission.

This mission was launched aboard an Atlas V 401 configuration vehicle, which includes a 4-meter diameter payload fairing. “It’s important to have a regular cadence of resupply flights, and we are looking forward to regular resupply to use the station as intended”, said Kirk Shireman, NASA’s programme manager of the ISS. Boeing intends to use the Atlas V to boost the Starliner capsules it’s building to ferry astronauts to the space station beginning in 2017.

The Cygnus launched Sunday is named after Mercury 7 astronaut Deke Slayton, a pioneer in commercial spaceflight before his death in 1993.