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NASA and SpaceX have announced a 24-hour weather delay to their planned launch of four astronauts into orbit for America’s first human mission using a privately owned spacecraft.
Takeoff time passed from Saturday to Sunday night due to forecasts of gusty ground winds over Florida, remnants of storm Eta, which would have jeopardized a return landing for the reusable booster stage of the Falcon 9 rocket. NASA officials said.
The Crew Dragon capsule, nicknamed Resilience by its crew, was rescheduled for launch at 7.27pm Sunday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
The crew for the flight to the International Space Station includes three American astronauts: Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and the mission commander, Mike Hopkins, a colonel in the United States air force who will be sworn into the fledgling American space force once on board. of the ISS.
The fourth member of the crew is Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who makes his third trip to orbit after flying on the American space shuttle in 2005 and on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2009.
The trip to the space station, spanning from about eight hours to just over a day by the new launch time, is considered SpaceX’s first “operational” mission for Crew Dragon.
A test flight of the vehicle to and from the space station with two crew members on board in August marked the first NASA astronaut space flight launched from US soil in nine years, following the end of the shuttle program.
NASA officials just signed off on the final Crew Dragon design earlier this week, culminating a nearly 10-year development phase for SpaceX under the space agency’s public-private crew program.
The advent of the Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon represents a new era of commercially developed space vehicles, owned by a private entity and operated by a private entity rather than NASA, used to carry Americans into orbit.
“The story that is being made this time is that we are launching what we call an operational flight to the International Space Station,” said NASA chief Jim Bridenstine.
Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX, often attends high-profile launches in person, but tested positive for coronavirus. It was unclear if Musk came into contact with the astronauts, but it is unlikely as the crew have been in routine quarantine for weeks before the flight.
NASA contracted with SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to develop space capsules to replace the shuttle and end the United States’ reliance on Russia to bring American astronauts into orbit. Boeing’s first manned test mission with its Starliner capsule is scheduled for late 2021.
