The sixth commercial cargo delivery by Orbital ATK’s Cygnus spacecraft, and the first using an Antares rocket since a launch failure in 2014, will carry more than 5,000 pounds of equipment to the International Space Station.
Closing out 52 days at the International Space Station, an automated Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo craft left the research outpost Sunday to climb into a higher orbit for deployment of six CubeSats and further engineering experiments, before de-orbiting over Pacific Ocean later this month.