A Northrop Grumman Antares launched from Virginia’s Eastern Shore with a commercial Cygnus supply ship Oct. 2 on a two-and-a-half day journey to the International Space Station.
The 139-foot-tall (42.5-meter) Antares rocket fired off pad 0A at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at 9:16:14 p.m. EDT on Oct. 2 (0116:14 GMT on Oct. 3). It was the 13th flight of an Antares rocket since 2013.
In these photos, two Russian-made RD-181 engines propel the Antares launcher off the pad with 864,000 pounds of thrust. The kerosene-fueled engines burned more than three minutes before the first stage jettisoned, allowing the Antares upper stage to accelerate the Cygnus cargo freighter into orbit.
Named the S.S. Kalpana Chawla in honor of one of the astronauts who died on the space shuttle Columbia in 2003, the Cygnus supply ship delivered nearly 8,000 pounds of cargo, experiments and crew provisions to the space station Monday, Oct. 5.
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