Q&A with Kurt Eberly, Orbital ATK’s Antares deputy program manager

SpaceX said Sunday that the first Falcon 9 rocket launch from pad 39A, a former shuttle-era complex at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is scheduled to send a Dragon supply ship to the International Space Station in mid-February, deferring a mission with an EchoStar communications satellite that was set to take off this month.

A Russian Soyuz booster and an automated Progress resupply ship reached their launch pad Friday at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, two days before firing into orbit test out a new expedited rendezvous sequence that will culminate in the Progress spacecraft’s docking with the International Space Station just three-and-a-half hours after launch.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will go from Cape Canaveral to low Earth orbit in 10 minutes Thursday with a Dragon capsule heading for the International Space Station carrying nearly 6,000 pounds of supplies and experiments.