Space station supplies launched with pizza delivery for 7

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – The latest delivery from Northrop Grumman’s space station includes pizza for seven.

The company’s cargo ship Cygnus took off from the east coast of Virginia on Tuesday. It is expected to reach the International Space Station on Thursday.

The 8,200-pound (3,700-kilogram) shipment includes fresh apples, tomatoes and kiwis, as well as a pizza kit and assorted cheeses for the station’s seven astronauts.

Also fly: a mounting bracket for the new solar wings launched in the orbiting lab next year, a material simulating the dust and dirt of the moon that will be used to create objects from the 3D printer of the space station, a viscous mold for a French educational experiment called Blob and an infrared sensing device designed as a prototype for future tracking satellites.

This is Northrop Grumman’s 16th supply run for NASA and his biggest load to date. The company’s Antares rocket hoisted the capsule from NASA’s Wallops flight facility.

“Aloha at SS Ellison Onizuka,” Northrop Grumman said via Launch Control a few minutes before takeoff. The capsule was named after Onizuka of Hawaii, the first Asian American to die in the Challenger launch disaster in 1986.

NASA’s other shipper, SpaceX, will follow with a shipment in a few weeks.

The space station currently houses three Americans, two Russians, a French and a Japanese.

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