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.