Cygnus launches toward the International Space Station

Orbital ATK's Antares rocket carrying Cygnus launched from

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Wallops Island, Virginia en route to resupply the International Space Station. Antares carried Cygnus off the pad at 7:46pm EDT igniting its new engines for the first time since the failure back in 2014. Cygnus was separated from the Castor 30XL solid fuel second stage at approximately 7:55pm EDT, 9 minutes after liftoff. Both of the spacecraft's solar arrays were successfully deployed around 9:28PM EDT and is now awaiting to approach the International Space Station. Cygnus has to wait for the new arrival of the 3 new crew members arriving at the station Friday in a Soyuz spacecraft. The station crew members will capture Cygnus and is expected to dock Sunday, around 7:05am EDT. 

Orbital ATK Antares to launch to ISS this afternoon

Orbital ATK is going to launch their Cygnus spacecraft

today aboard the Antares rocket to resupply the International Space Station. Antares will launch from Wallops Island, Virginia at 7:40pm EDT. Cygnus will carry over 5,300lbs of cargo to the ISS. Antares and Cygnus were rolled out to the pad and raised vertically over the weekend and was supposed to launch yesterday but was scrubbed due to an error with a ground equipment cable. 9 minutes after launch, Cygnus will separate from the second stage and deploy its solar arrays about 1 hour and 20 minutes after. Once Cygnus rendezvous, the crew will grapple the spacecraft with the canadarm and dock it to the ISS. After the mission at the station is over, it will undock from the ISS and conduct the Sapphire-2 Space Combustion experiment from NASA's Glenn Research Center to

burn material and study open flames in space. During this time, Cygnus will deploy several small CubeSats from an external NanoRacks deployer. At the end of the mission, Cygnus will conduct a safe reentry over the Atlantic Ocean, completing the mission. All photos credit of Orbital ATK.

China launches two crew members to Tiangong-2 Station

China successfully launched 2 crew members on their Shenzhou-11 rocket to the Tiangong-2 space lab for 30 days. The spacecraft will dock with the space station in 2 days and they will conduct experiments related to medicine and physics. The spacecraft will undock and land back to Earth 1 day after undocking. The landing is planned to occur on November 19th. This will mark another step forward for the countries goal of creating a permanent station in space by the 2020s. The full video of this launch can be viewed here.

Blue Origin tests in-flight abort

On October 5th, Blue Origin launched it's reused New Shepard rocket to test their in-flight abort system for the crew capsule in case something were to go wrong. Video of the in-flight abort test can be viewed here.

NOAA to launch GOES-R Weather Satellite

NOAA is going to launch a new weather satellite that will give new High-Definition data for weather predictions. GOES-R will launch aboard an Atlas V rocket into a Geostationary orbit above the US on November 4th at 5:40pm EDT. This data will give a real-time view of the weather in a way we've never seen it before. Some members of the media had a chance to view the Spacecraft before in the Astrotech cleanroom and learn about its functions and the instruments used onboard. They described the upgrade in the imagery as going from Black and White TV to Full HD, so the change is going to be huge.