Weather woes push back launch for NASA, SpaceX
Weather has pushed back the upcoming SpaceX launch that’s set to propel three NASA astronauts and one Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut to the International Space Station.
The Crew-1 mission, previously scheduled to launch Saturday, has been moved to Sunday at 6:27 p.m. CST. The delay was due to Saturday’s forecast for onshore winds aswell as the recently departed Tropical Storm Eta, which prevented the “Just Read the Instructions” droneship from getting to the rocket’s recovery area in the Atlantic Ocean on time. SpaceX plans to vertically land the rocket’s first stage on the droneship and then reuse it to launch its next astronaut mission in the spring.
“This booster is very important for us,” Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said Friday during a news conference.
The ship left port midday Thursday — later than desired— and due to sea conditions it hasn’t been able to go fast enough to arrive at the rocket’s recovery area by Saturday. It will be in position for Sunday’s launch, said Benji Reed, the SpaceX senior director for Human Spaceflight Programs.
The Falcon 9 rocket will launch a Crew Dragon capsule carrying Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker of NASA and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. They will spend six months on the space station.
It is the first operational flight for SpaceX; the company received its NASA certification earlier this week. This certification is the culmination of many years of development and testing — including the Demo-2 test flight that launched NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and DougH urley earlier this year — and it indicates that SpaceX has met NASA’s design, safety and performance requirements.