Antares Rocket Finally Lifts Off [VIDEO]

After two days of launch delays, the Antares rocket finally lifted off this past Sunday, starting the second resupply mission for the Orbital Sciences Corporation.

The rocket entered space high above NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia soon after its 12:52 p.m. EDT launch Sunday afternoon.

The Antares multi-stage rocket is carrying the Cygnus unmanned cargo spacecraft and nearly 3,300 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of a NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract. Orbital is due to carry out at least eight cargo missions of this type as part of the $1.9 billion contract, which was also awarded to SpaceX and its Dragon cargo craft for a minimum of 12 missions.

According to a NASA release, the Cygnus will reach the ISS on Wednesday, July 16, when Expedition 40 commander Steve Swanson will use the station's robotic arm to grab hold of the cargo craft.

Inside the craft are standard supplies alongside new technologies from NASA's Ames Research Center that will further existing station work and start several new objectives.

A "flock of nano satellites" from Planet Labs in San Francisco will be released to take detailed images of Earth; and a series of CubeSat satellites, the TechEdSat-4, are also due to be tested. These satellites will experiment with strategies for satellite-to-satellite communication.

The TechEdSat-4 will also be testing the "exo-brake," a decelerating system designed for atmospheric reentry. A CubeSat spacecraft will likely use a similar system to place a scrapbook of 2014 on Mars in the near-future.

Most exciting of all, the next generation of Smart SHERES, tiny free-floating robotic assistants, are being delivered to the ISS aboard the Cygnus. These tiny robots will test new navigation technologies developed in a collaboration with Google's Project Tango.

In late August, the delivered capsule will be filled with trash and ejected from the ISS to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

[Credit: NASA]