The two NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken were strapped in and had completed communication checks. The fuelling of the rocket had already begun …
The two NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken were strapped in and had completed communication checks. The fuelling of the rocket had already begun but with just under 17 minutes to go for liftoff, NASA and SpaceX made the choice to cancel their first joint commercial human spaceflight mission due to inclement weather.
While both the space agency and the private aerospace company had mentioned that there was a possibility of it being postponed, this was the most anti-climatic ending for what was going to be the first American lift-off in nine years, since the Space Shuttle program was cancelled back in 2011.
The mission has been rescheduled for an instantaneous launch on Sunday,31 May,12.52 am IST (May 30 at 3:22 p.m. EDT) from the Launch Complex 39A from the Kenndy Space Centre, Florida, which was also the launch site for the previous Apollo and Space Shuttle missions and is being leased by SpaceX. It also has another back-up date on Monday,1 June,12.30 am IST (Sunday, May 31 at 3:00 p.m. EDT).
Live coverage of the event will begin at 8.30 pm IST on 30 May, four hours before the launch is to take place.
A launch window indicates the time frame on a given day in the launch period (is a collection of days) that the rocket can launch to reach its intended orbit or in this case meet the International Space Station. This can be as short as a second or even the entire day.
The lift-off of the Falcon 9 has to be timed precisely to reach the space station, which is zooming overhead at 400 km above Earth at 17,500 mph. The spacecraft and crew have a launch window of 1-second (instantaneous launch window) otherwise the team will have to make another attempt on another day.
An hour before Dragon was supposed to launch, they were still « in the red » and they would not have been able to launch in those conditions but they continued going through with the launch sequence in the hopes for clearer weather. NASA reported that they had been keeping an eye on the weather the entire time but rain, cumulus clouds, attached anvil clouds, lightning, and field mill data – which measure the amount of electricity in the atmosphere – all violated Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon launch criteria at times throughout the day.
