On this day in space! Oct. 17, 2016: Antares rocket returns to flight

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On Oct. 17, 2016, Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman Space Systems) returned to flight.

On Oct. 17, 2016, Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman Space Systems) returned to flight, successfully launching a cargo shipment to the International Space Station (ISS) after its previous cargo mission failed to launch.

The private spaceflight company was contracted by NASA to fly cargo to the ISS, and stakes were high for this launch. Orbital ATK's last attempt nearly two years earlier ended in a catastrophic explosion a few seconds after liftoff.

The Orbital Science Corporation Antares rocket is seen as it is raised into position at launch Pad-0A, Tuesday, December 16, 2013, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Despite some delays, the newly upgraded Antares rocket flawlessly blasted off into the night sky from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Six days later, the Cygnus cargo spacecraft arrived at the ISS to deliver food, supplies and science experiments to the crew.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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