Weather permitting, the Northrup Grumman rocket and Cygnus cargo spacecraft may be visible to East Coast residents in the first few minutes after Friday’s launch from Wallops’ Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. “The launch is expected to be visible to much of the East Coast if the skies are clear,” explained the Facility in a Facebook post.
The unmanned Cygnus cargo craft will carry 7,500 pounds of groceries, hardware and research.
One of the science experiments onboard will explore how the universe formed from stardust. Another will explore the pathology of Parkinson's disease. Yet another involves the sustainable fabrication and repair of plastic materials on lengthy space missions.
The launch window opens at 4:23 a.m. EST Friday. NASA had originally planned to launch the rocket 24 hours earlier, but had been forced to push it back as a result of unfavorable weather conditions.
“Today’s Wallops range forecast for Nov. 15 assessed weather conditions at 90-percent unfavorable for a launch, with the main concerns being thick clouds, disturbed weather and low cloud ceilings,” said Northrop Grumman, in a blog post on Wednesday. “Heavy rainfall (1-2 inches) and high wind gusts (45-50 mph) are expected.”
Weather could still impact Friday’s launch. While rainfall is expected to taper off Friday morning, strong northwesterly winds are still expected during the launch window. A scrubbed launch would push the resupply mission back to Saturday.
“Conditions look to become quite favorable for a launch Saturday morning with high pressure building into the southeastern U.S. and the Eastern Shore, providing lighter winds and mostly clear to clear skies,” said Northrop Grumman in the blog post. “One caveat to Saturday however, is that the system expected to impact the Wallops region Thursday will drag a strong front across Bermuda on Friday into early Saturday, providing potentially heavy rainfall and strong winds there prior to the launch window.”
The space station resupply mission is the first since the botched launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan on Oct. 11. A Russian space investigation blamed a damaged sensor for forcing the rocket to abort its trip just two minutes after it was launched.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexei Ovchinin made a dramatic escape shortly after the launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Later on Friday, Russia also plans to launch its own resupply mission to the ISS.
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