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.
Photo Credit: United Launch Alliance
See earlier Cygnus OA-4 coverage.
Our Atlas archive.
NASA has selected United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket to dispatch the Lucy spacecraft on a mission from Cape Canaveral in October 2021 to fly by seven unexplored asteroids, including six objects locked in orbits leading and trailing Jupiter, where scientists expect swarms of miniature worlds could hold clues about the formation of the solar system.
Nine Merlin engines ignited and throttled up to nearly 2 million pounds of thrust Sunday during a brief hold-down firing of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, sending a plume of smoke out of the flame trench at Kennedy Space Center’s historic launch pad 39A as the company preps for a space station cargo mission next weekend.
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