Live coverage: Cygnus cargo freighter departs space station

A twin-engine Northrop Grumman Antares rocket climbed into orbit Saturday from Virginia’s Eastern Shore carrying a Cygnus supply ship bound for the International Space Station with a compact electron microscope, a flame combustion experiment, a range of biological investigations, fresh cheese, fruit and vegetables for the research lab’s three-person crew.

An Orbital ATK investigation into last year’s Antares rocket crash in Virginia identified a decades-old manufacturing defect inside an AJ26 engine turbopump as the most likely cause of the failure, but a team of NASA engineers was not so sure in their report.

A Christmas Eve reading from the book of Genesis by the Apollo 8 astronauts — commander Frank Borman, lunar module pilot Bill Anders and command module pilot Jim Lovell — from lunar orbit in 1968.