Editor’s note: Updated at 2 a.m. EST (0700 GMT) with a Saturday delay.
SpaceX canceled an attempt to launch the Falcon 9 on Thursday to assess the “slightly higher” pressure reading in the rocket’s upper-stage liquid oxygen oxygen tank, and officials rescheduled the company’s final mission of the year on Saturday morning.
The sensor read at the top of the Falcon 9 was “auto-aborted” in T-minus 1 minute, 53 seconds, as SpaceX will be counted in a planned liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center at 9:45 a.m. EST on Thursday. .
The Falcon 9 launch team reset the countdown clock to save the opportunity to try again to send the Falcon 9 rocket into the sky before the end of Thursday’s three-hour launch window. In the end, officials decided to keep the rocket on the ground, giving it more time to evaluate the potential problem at a later stage.
SpaceX initially aimed to try to restart the Falcon 9 rocket on Friday, but the company said the late-night mission on Thursday would be rescheduled for Saturday morning to allow extra time for checkout.
The top of the Falcon 9 rocket has a top secret payload for the US government’s spy satellite agency, the National Reconnaissance Office. The mission, designated NROL-108, will be SpaceX’s 26th and 2020 Falcon 9 flight, surpassing the company’s previous record of 21 launches a year in 2018.
Read our mission preview for details of the launch.
Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX, engineers were evaluating “slightly” low pressure readings in the rocket’s upper-stage liquid oxygen tank
“Today is the day to inspect the rocket,” Musk tweeted.
SpaceX landed the Falcon 9 rocket horizontally on Pad 39A on Thursday evening, presumably to observe the second stage.
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