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On Friday night, November 13, NASA and SpaceX announced that the first operational mission of the Crew Dragon Commercial Crew Program would be delayed 24 hours until Sunday, November 15 at 7:27 pm EST (0027 GMT 11/16). ). During a press conference prior to the launch of Crew-1, SpaceX’s senior director of Human Space Flight Programs, Benji Reed, stated that the delay was due to impacts on recovery efforts caused by Tropical Storm Eta. , which had plagued Florida for days.
Just before the press conference, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully launched its Atlas V rocket after suffering its own delays earlier in the week. The NROL-101 mission carried a classified payload for the US government’s Office of National Reconnaissance and was successfully launched from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Air Force Station. Cañaveral at 5:32 pm EST.
Florida weather caused multiple launch delays
Weather, especially that caused by Tropical Storm Eta, has caused a ripple effect of delays for SpaceX and ULA in recent weeks. The ULA Atlas V 531 rocket stacked with the secret NROL-101 payload, initially scheduled to take off on November 3, was first delayed by damage to the hardware of the upper stage environmental control system.
According to the company’s CEO, Tory Bruno, when the rocket was transported from ULA’s Vertical Integration Facility (VIF) to the SLC-41 launch pad, very strong winds caused damage to a conduit that controlled the flow rate of a superior payload environmental control system. As a result, the rocket was returned to the VIF for the conduit to be replaced. A launch attempt scheduled for the following day, Wednesday, November 4, was canceled due to an issue unrelated to the ground support team.
The NROL-101 mission was scheduled to launch on Sunday, November 8, but that attempt was eventually canceled due to the impending weather that would sweep across the Florida peninsula from Hurricane Eta. On Friday, November 6, the Atlas V 531 rocket and the National Reconnaissance Office payload were again returned to the VIF for protection against the storm.
A final launch attempt was identified for Friday, November 13, just 22 hours before the scheduled launch of the SpaceX mission, NASA Crew-1 from nearby Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Fortunately, the weather held long enough for the ULA Atlas V 531 rocket to lift off. After liftoff and successful payload deployment, the mission was declared a total success by ULA.
Florida weather also caused delays in recovery at sea, affecting the manned launch.
Similarly, the SpaceX and NASA Crew-1 mission has also suffered setbacks due to inclement weather, although not at the launch site. Following the successful launch and landing of the B1062 Falcon 9 from the recent GPSII-SV04 mission on Thursday, November 5, SpaceX recovery teams battled against unstable seas to return the booster and recovery spacecraft, Of Course I Still Love You ( OCISLY), safely back to Port Canaveral.
After safely securing the B1062 aboard OCISLY, the SpaceX GO Quest recovery ship took refuge in the port of Morehead City in North Carolina. The recovery team would wait there to assist with the recovery of the B1061 Falcon 9 from the Crew-1 mission, instead of returning to Port Canaveral in Florida. The Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) drone was intended to meet the GO Quest crew in the Crew-1 reinforcement recovery zone before the end of the week.
Due to high winds and rough seas by Tropical Storm Eta, the OCISLY droneship made an exceptionally tedious 7-day journey across the east coast of the United States to return to Port Canaveral. The delay caused the process of transferring the crew from OCISLY to JRTI to be delayed, which in turn hampered the departure of the JRTI droneship.
As Tropical Storm Eta moved away from Florida, the waters of the Atlantic remained too rough for the JRTI drone to make up for lost time. Following the conclusion of the SpaceX Crew-1 preliminary launch readiness review on Friday, November 13, it was announced that the delay in bringing the recovery drones to the B1061 landing zone would delay the Crew-1 launch attempt. in 24 hours.
Retrieving the Falcon 9 booster, from any mission, is a secondary objective of the mission. However, the recovery of the Crew-1, B1061 Falcon 9 is important to both NASA and SpaceX, enough to delay a launch attempt. NASA and SpaceX have already designated this booster for reuse on the upcoming Crew Dragon mission, Crew-2, scheduled for no earlier than March 30, 2021. To reuse a booster to save on launch costs, it must first be successfully recovered . .
If all goes according to plan, three NASA astronauts and one astronaut from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will board the Crew Dragon Resilience on Sunday, November 15, and take off for the International Space Station at precisely 7:27 p.m. EST. (0027 11/16) of LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center.
NASA and SpaceX will provide a hosted live stream of all Crew-1 events starting at 3:15 pm EST on Sunday, November 15, on NASA TV and on the SpaceX website.
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