The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched HTV2 aboard an H-IIB rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan at 12:37 a.m. (2:27 p.m. Japan time) on Saturday.

HTV2 is the second unpiloted cargo ship launched by JAXA to the station and will deliver more than four tons of food and supplies to the station and its crew members.

The crew will open the hatch and begin retrieving the supplies from inside HTV2 at about 7:30 a.m. Friday.

In the coming days, a pallet loaded with spare station parts will be extracted from a slot in the cargo ship and attached to an experiment platform outside the Japanese Kibo module. Other cargo will be transferred internally to the station.

The cargo vehicle will be filled with trash, detached from the station and sent to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere at the end of March.

Meanwhile, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, another cargo ship, the Russian ISS Progress 41, is set to launch at 8:31 p.m. (7:31 a.m. Baikonur time Friday).

It will begin a two-day trek to the station and dock Saturday night at 9:39 p.m. The Progress will deliver 1,918 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen, 926 pounds of water and 3,080 pounds of spare parts and supplies to the station.

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