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

Concluding 80 days attached the International Space Station, the commercial Cygnus cargo ship will be detached to fly away Tuesday for an unprecedented onboard fire experiment before re-entering the atmosphere next week.

Facing pressure to find a ride into space for its commercial Cygnus cargo craft in the wake of a catastrophic rocket failure, Orbital Sciences Corp. says it has found openings in the mission manifests of the world’s busiest launch operators to accommodate resupply flights to the International Space Station next year.

A two-stage Northrop Grumman Antares rocket rolled out of its horizontal integration facility Monday for the mile-journey south to launch pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia, where liftoff on a space station resupply mission is scheduled for Wednesday.