Video: Animation of Vulcan launch

The spacecraft will journey back to Earth without the two astronauts it launched with back on June 5. Undocking is set for 6:04 p.m. EDT (2204 UTC) with landing just after midnight on Saturday.

A collection of pad photos from the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket flight to deploy the Orbital ATK Cygnus commercial cargo-delivery spacecraft for the International Space Station.

Prognosticators are predicting favorable weather conditions to launch an Atlas 5 rocket Thursday and send NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on its interplanetary journey to interrogate an asteroid and collect a surface sample for return to Earth.