A little while ago, the Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Cygnus spacecraft took off on an Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), part of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) on Wallops Island, Virginia. The Cygnus, which carries nearly 600 kg (about 1,300 lbs) of non-essential cargo to the International Space Station, separated successfully from the last stage of the Antares and is en route to the Station.

Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket successfully completed its test launch in April 2013. In that case, it launched a dummy mass that simulated the Cygnus spacecraft but of course this time the real Cygnus was sent to the International Space Station.

This mission is called Orb-D or COTS Demo because it’s a demonstration of the Cygnus spacecraft possibilities within the COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services ) contract signed with NASA to provide commercial orbital transportation services. It’s also known as the Cygnus 1 because it’s the first flight for Cygnus.

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After the successful April test of the Antares rocket, the plan was to proceed with the testing of the Cygnus spacecraft already in June or July. However, after examining the data of the launch, Orbital Sciences decided to replace one of the AJ-26 engines of the first stage and this added a few weeks to the schedule. A launch in August was impossible because of a conflict with other planned activities on board the International Space Station and that’s why this mission was postopned to September.

Orbital Sciences isn’t very famous to the general public but ever since it was founded in 1982 it’s been working in the field of the manufacturing and deploying satellites into orbit. In recent years, its market has expanded and when NASA started financing private companies because to build spacecraft capable of carrying cargoes to the International Space Station, Orbital has become one of the companies that were awarded the contract.

The arrival of the Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station is scheduled for next Sunday, September 22. The maneuvering systems will be tested and if the slow approach will be considered satisfactory they’ll proceed with the docking of Cygnus using the robotic arm Canadarm2 operated by Station’s crew.

NASA put on line a clip of the first minutes of the Antares / Cygnus mission.