[SatNews] Orbital announced this morning that the launch of the Antares rocket for the Orb-2 Commercial Resupply Services mission to the International Space Station for NASA has been rescheduled for Sunday, July 13 at 12:52 p.m. EDT.
Over the past several days, Orbital’s launch team has made great progress in preparing the rocket for the Orb-2 mission, which will be the fourth flight of Antares in the past 15 months. However, severe weather in the Wallops area has repeatedly interrupted the team’s normal operational schedule leading up to the launch. As a result, these activities have taken longer than expected. Orbital has decided to postpone the Orb-2 mission by an additional day in order to maintain normal launch operations processing.
With its launch moved to Sunday, Cygnus is now scheduled to arrive at the ISS on Wednesday, July 16th with grapple by the station’s robotic arm scheduled for approximately 6:37 a.m. EDT. Cygnus is carrying about 3,300 pounds of supplies for the Station including research investigations, crew provisions, hardware, and science experiments from across the country.
Rollout of the Antares rocket + Cynus payload.
Photo courtesy of Orbital Sciences.
Rollout of the Antares rocket to its launch pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport has occurred. The team will erect the rocket on the pad and continue preparations for the launch on Sunday.
An image gallery for the launch campaign is available here and on Flickr.
Launch viewing maps including where to look in select cities are available here
