The launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule with three US and one Japanese astronaut from Florida, scheduled for November 14, has been delayed by a day, NASA announced citing wind conditions.
Originally scheduled for Saturday evening, the Crew-1 mission to the International Space Station has been pushed back to Sunday, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said on Twitter.
Update: Due to onshore winds and recovery operations, @NASA and @SpaceX are targeting launch of the Crew-1 mission with astronauts to the @Space_Station at 7:27 p.m. EST Sunday, Nov. 15. The first stage booster is planned to be reused to fly astronauts on Crew-2. #LaunchAmerica
— Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) November 13, 2020
The Crew Dragon was supposed to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida. However, wind coming in from the sea would interfere with recovery operations, Bridenstine explained. SpaceX has been landing the Falcon 9 boosters on a drone ship, in order to reuse them for future launches.
This weekend’s launch has been praised by NASA as historic, signaling both the first time a commercially developed spaceship is being used on a regular ISS mission and the official return of the US capability for launching astronauts into space, lost with the closure of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.
NASA’s Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, as well as Soichi Noguchi from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), are scheduled to spend six months on board the ISS.
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