Shortly after liftoff, the rocket wiggled slightly. When Antares' engines ignited this evening, it took the rocket 3.6 seconds to lift off and about 8 seconds to completely exit its support structure. The updated launch system uses Russian-made RD-181 rocket engines in place of AJ26 engines, which were implicated in the October 2014 accident. Today's launch was the first to use Orbital ATK's new and improved Antares 230 rocket. Among Cygnus' cargo on OA-5 are a number of science experiments, supplies and hardware for spacewalks, as well as food and clothing for the astronauts. (30,000 kg) of cargo to the space station over the course of 10 missions. Under Orbital ATK's $1.9 billion contract with NASA, the private spaceflight company will carry about 66,000 lbs. Therefore, Cygnus will wait its turn, loitering in orbit until Sunday (Oct. 13) planned launch as the Category 1 storm shut down Orbital ATK's tracking station in Bermuda.īecause the Antares launch date slipped several days, the Cygnus spacecraft's planned arrival now conflicts with the arrival of a Russian Soyuz spacecraft that will be delivering three astronauts to the ISS Friday (Oct. A few days prior, Hurricane Nicole prompted a scrub of Thursday's (Oct. 16) forced NASA and Orbital ATK to postpone the launch by a day. Nash said the OA-5 prelaunch tests went "extremely well," and that they were "two of the cleanest tests we've ever seen."ĭespite the clean bill of health for Antares and the onboard Cygnus, an issue with one of the ground support cables at the launchpad just hours before launch time on Sunday (Oct. Dale Nash, executive director of Virginia's Commercial Space Flight Authority, said the Wallops launchpad - which cost $15 million to rebuild after the 2014 explosion - is in better shape than ever before. 15), NASA officials and Orbital ATK representatives expressed confidence that OA-5 would go well. (The two missions immediately following the October 2014 accident employed United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets.)ĭuring a news conference here Saturday (Oct. The current mission, titled OA-5, is Orbital ATK's sixth official cargo resupply mission for NASA, and the fourth using an Antares rocket. Its last attempt at launching an Antares rocket, nearly two years ago, ended in a catastrophic explosion just a few seconds after liftoff from Pad-0A here at Wallops. This is a high-stakes mission for the Virginia-based commercial spaceflight company Orbital ATK. (Image credit: Karl Tate, Infographics Artist) See how Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft and Antares rockets works in this infographic. How Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft service the space station.
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