A much awaited cargo resupply vehicle was launched into space via an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, Sunday afternoon where the Cygnus cargo spacecraft is heading towards the International Space Station.

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There have been three failed attempts since Thursday last week and after launch windows delayed on Thursday and Friday, launch directors and managers have only been anticipating a 20 percent chance of good weather conditions and decided to stop the countdown three hours before the countdown on Saturday before fueling the Atlas V rocket of United Launch Alliance.

The precious cargo inside the Orbital ATK's Cygnus spacecraft is filled with mre than 7,000 pounds of food, equipment and scientific experiments for the six astronauts aboard the orbiting space laboratory. This will be Orbitak ATK's fourth successful mission out of 10, where the private space company is under a more than US $2 billion NASA contract.

This time around, Orbital ATK's Cygnus relied on the 60th launch of United Launch Alliance's Atlas V rocket since Orbital ATK's own Antares rocket exploded after seconds following its liftoff from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia late last year.

According to president of the Space Systems Group at Orbital ATK, Frank Culbertson, the company is very proud to be back to provide launch supplies to the International Space Station again. It has been challenging to return to this point. The Cygnus spacecraft will dock at the ISS for two and half days.

In a string of failed resupply cargo ship launches, the space station has been struggling to rebound from this series of unfortunate events. Apart from the Antares Cygnus launch last year, a Russian Progress ship failed to communicate with its mothership and has fallen back to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere. A SpaceX Dragon capsule also fell into the ocean when its Falcon 9 rocket exploded last June.

After this, supplies have been arriving at the space station safely although none of them were launched from American soil. Today, the station has enough food and supplies to last until April, which is below the six month margin of NASA. However, according to NASA's space station program manager, Kirk Shireman, this has not been a critical situation at all.

Now, all the spacesuits, along with jetpacks and high pressure oxygen tanks and nitrogen tanks will be replenished from this cargo resupply mission, which have not been replaced since the last space shuttle mission in 2011.

TagsOrbital ATK Cygnus cargo resupply vehicle, United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, ISS, NASA ISS, cargo resupply mission NASA, supplies launch ISS, cargo resupply mission, International Space Station, cygnus supply mission space station