Video: Atlas 5 rocket launches space station cargo mission

Frank Culbertson, a former shuttle and station astronaut and now head of Orbital ATK’s space systems group, spoke with Spaceflight Now’s Stephen Clark on the sidelines of the 2015 International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight.

An Israeli-built moon lander aiming to become the first privately-funded mission reach another planetary body rocketed away from Cape Canaveral on Thursday night aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, riding piggyback with an Indonesian communications spacecraft and an experimental U.S. Air Force space surveillance microsatellite.

SpaceX was already tasked with returning NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams as part of the Crew-9 mission. That departure was delayed by NASA due to unresolved issues with the fifth Crew Dragon capsule that will launch the Crew-10 flight.