WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. – The Wallops Island launch of an Antares rocket carrying Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft on a resupply mission to the International Space Station has been delayed until mid-September, according to a new mission update from Orbital.
The launch was originally planned for late July.
The delay was due to a variety of factors, including more testing and inspection at Wallops and NASA’s schedule of crew activities on the ISS.
Orbital is now working with NASA to target a window in the second half of September for the mission. Orbital expects a specific launch date to be announced in the coming weeks.
The Cygnus spacecraft will carry approximately 5,290 pounds of supplies and science experiments to the ISS under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.
This will be the first launch to the ISS from Wallops Island since October 2014, when an Antares rocket exploded just six seconds after launching from Launch Pad – 0A at Wallops.
Cygnus will also carry the Saffire II payload experiment to study combustion behavior in microgravity. In addition, a NanoRack deployer will release Spire Cubesats used for weather forecasting. These secondary payload operations will be conducted after Cygnus departs the space station.
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