NASA reschedules supply mission to ISS for Friday

Liftoff of the ULA Atlas 5 rocket is slated for 5:55 p.m. EST (2255 GMT) on Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The mission is the first flight of the Cygnus advanced maneuvering spacecraft. The rocket is due to lift off early Thursday evening with 7,400 pounds of supplies for the International Space Station.

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket, a joint venture between Boeing Co.

Much-needed food is inside Orbital’s cargo carrier, named Cygnus after the swan constellation.

Ukraine-related trade sanctions enacted previous year ban USA military use of the RD-180 engines.

Bad weather forced the USA space agency NASA to delay the private Cygnus cargo spacecraft’s return-to-flight mission. Launch of the Atlas V is scheduled for Thursday evening.

While the Antares rocket continues its recovery, the Cygnus cargo will be launched using a competitor’s rocket – United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, according to The New York Times.

For the second day in a row, poor weather stalled a critical space station delivery for NASA on Friday.

Orbital ATK is one of two commercial spaceflight companies with contracts to fly cargo to the International Space Station for NASA. In June, a Falcon 9 rocket launched by Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. blew up en route to the orbiting lab. Orbital has made two successful liftoffs under its 2008 pact with NASA, while SpaceX has completed six. A Russian resupply mission, in fact, is scheduled just before Christmas.

Orbital ATK plans to resume operations of its Antares rocket in 2016. “We are pleased that the enhanced Cygnus that bears his name will be able to provide up to 53 percent more in cargo weight to the International Space Station than our previously flown standard version”, Frank Culbertson, president of Orbital ATK’s Space Systems Group, said in a statement.