STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USE WITH PERMISSION
The launch of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule transporting four astronauts to the International Space Station has been delayed 24 hours until Friday due to bad weather in the Atlantic, where crews may be forced into emergencies, NASA announced on Wednesday.
The flight was originally picked up from the Kennedy Space Center at 6:11 a.m. EDT Thursday morning. The flight resumed Friday at 5:49 a.m., about the moment the rotation of Earth’s path 39A carries directly under the orbit of the space station – a requirement for spacecraft attempting to meet a target in a low-earth orbit .
“We’ll have to postpone a day, we can not start tomorrow morning,” Bob Cabana, director of the spacecraft, told reporters. ‘Although the weather is likely to look fine here at the launch site, we are concerned about the wind regions and waves in the event of an abortion, should it happen.
“Once this front goes through, it’s going to be absolutely beautiful on Friday morning. We’re going to come out again and do it.”
If all goes well on Friday, Commander Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japanese pilot Akihiko Hoshide will catch up with the space station on Saturday and arrive at around 05:10 for an automatic dock for a planned seen kicking off. -may stay.
Unlike the spacecraft, which can glide to the runways in the United States, Spain or Africa in the event of a flight interruption, the parachute-equipped crew is designed to splash safely into the sea as the automatic escape system. activated. , to drive the rig away from a booster that is not working.
Relatively calm seas and winds are necessary for a safe extravagance and for the successful recovery of the first phase of the Falcon 9 on a navigable droneship.
Although the chance of a flight break being en route is exceptional requirements, flight rules must be acceptable conditions for the country before a dragon is cleared by the crew. Better weather, both on shore and outside, is expected on Friday.
“It’s not just about the launch (again) when we launch the crew,” Benji Reed, director of human spaceflight for SpaceX, said in a pre-flight briefing brief on Tuesday. ‘We have to worry about the whole runway, because if something goes wrong, we want Dragon to be able to escape the rocket. And that means they have to be able to get down at all points along the potential escape into the ocean.
“We look at wind and waves and lightning, all sorts of things to make sure it’s right.”
Kimbrough and his three crew members replace the crew of another Dragon capsule – Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and the Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi – which was launched to the station last November during the first operational flight of the commercial crew program.
Despite the delay in launching their replacements, Hopkins and the company still plan to return to Earth next Wednesday as previously planned, and crash in the Gulf of Mexico at 12:40 a.m. on a 164-day mission to close.