[ad_1]
It was an anti-climactic launch day at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida this morning (January 23), where SpaceX was supposed to launch a record 143 satellites in a single Falcon 9 rocket.
The company was targeting a 9:40 am EST (1440 GMT) launch for the Mission Transporter-1, but scrubbed a little over six minutes before scheduled takeoff due to bad weather conditions. SpaceX will attempt the launch again on Sunday (January 24) at 10am EST (1500 GMT) from Space Launch Complex 40.
You can watch the launch live here and on the Space.com homepage, courtesy of SpaceX, or you can watch it directly from SpaceX here about 15 minutes before lift-off.
“The timing seems a bit uncertain for our current lift-off time,” SpaceX production supervisor Andy Tran said about seven minutes before the rocket took off today, citing electric fields.
Related: See the evolution of SpaceX rockets in pictures
Less than a minute later, the SpaceX team made the call to eliminate the launch attempt entirely, without waiting for time to run out. Electric fields are a risk for rocket launches because they can cause ray formation during takeoff.
The Transporter-1 launch will be SpaceX’s first dedicated carpool mission, with 133 small assorted satellites and 10 of the company’s Starlink Internet satellites. When launched, the mission will hold the record for most satellites deployed from a single rocket, Tran said.
The launch will be the fifth flight of the Falcon 9 first-stage thruster. Its previous flights, all in 2020, include the company’s first crewed launch, called Demo-2, in May 2020, which sent two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station for a two-month stay. The thruster also launched a military communications satellite for South Korea, a Cargo Dragon refueling ship to the station for NASA, and a separate Starlink mission.
Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
