WASHINGTON, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Orbital Sciences Corp., one of two private companies that currently hold a contract with U.S. space agency NASA to fly unmanned cargo missions to the International Space Station, has rescheduled the test flight of its Antares rocket to Sunday.
"Today's Antares launch has been scrubbed due to upper wind conditions," said NASA via its official Twitter ajgn%3Dc6e next launch attempt will be Sunday, April 21 at 5 p.m. EDT ( 2100 GMT)." A Wednesday attempt to launch the rocket from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia, was called off due to "a premature separation of an umbilical connection on the second stage". The Virginia-based Orbital signed a 1.9-billion-U.S.-dollar deal with NASA to fly eight unmanned supply missions using the Antares and Cygnus cargo delivery system.
Another U.S. company, California-based SpaceX, made history when its Dragon spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle in history to successfully attach to the space station in a May 2012 test flight. Dragon has already made three trips to the space station and it still needs to complete another ten to fulfill its 1.6-billion- dollar contract with NASA. The next SpaceX cargo run is scheduled for September.
