Jul 13, 2014 02:02 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Orbital Sciences successfully launched a rocket Sunday afternoon and it is now on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) on a resupply mission.

According to the Associated Press, Orbital's Cygnus capsule took off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia. The launch, Orbital's third with NASA, was delayed multiple times before taking off just before 1 p.m. Sunday.

The ISS will keep the Cygnus capsule attached to the port for about a month to load it up with trash before letting it fall back to Earth to burn up on reentry. Like Orbital, a private company, SpaceX is also under contract to perform ISS resupply missions. Unlike Orbital, SpaceX's Dragon capsule is designed to land safely back on the ground after detaching from the ISS.

According to NASA, Orbital's Cygnus capsule is carrying 3,293 pounds of cargo. Most of the contents in the capsule are supplies for the crew, such as food, care packages and other provisions, taking up 1,684 pounds. The rest of the load is made up of hardware, science equipment, computer supplies and spacewalk tools.

"We're real proud to be part of the team that is keeping the station flying and providing the crew with cargo and the research that they need," Frank Culbertson, a former NASA astronaut and Orbital Sciences executive vice president, told reporters in a pre-launch briefing Saturday afternoon, according to Space.com. "It's been a little bit of a challenge to get to this point."

NASA's launch went according to plan and the capsule broke off from the Antares rocket about 10 minutes after taking off.

"The Antares rocket stands 131.5 feet tall, about the height of a 13-story building. The four poles surrounding the pad help protect the rocket from lightning," NASA stated in its Orbital blog. "The water tower (formally the Water Deluge System) holds some 200,000 gallons of freshwater for cooling and noise suppression purposes. The white tank visible in the foreground is part of the Liquid Fueling Facility. Antares' first stage is fueled with a combination of liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene."

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