A crew of four, including three US astronauts - Crew 1 commander Michael Hopkins, mission specialists Victor Glover and Shannon Walker and one Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi will be sent to the International Space Station.
According to a NASA spokesperson, SpaceX has made the call to delay the launch of capsule, Resilience from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, due to rough winds.
In NASA’s first operational mission using the Crew Dragon capsule, Elon Musk's SpaceX capsule, Resilience is now all set to be launched on Sunday at 7:27 pm instead of Saturday evening.
Liftoff was originally slated for Saturday evening 7.49 pm, but NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said Friday afternoon, that rough winds at Florida's Kennedy Space Center, the launch site, prompted SpaceX and NASA to push their target launch time to Sunday at 7:27 pm.
A crew of four, including three US astronauts - Crew 1 commander Michael Hopkins, mission specialists Victor Glover and Shannon Walker and one Japanese astronaut, Soichi Noguchi will be sent to the International Space Station.
The roughly eight-hour flight to the station will be SpaceX’s first operational mission, as opposed to a test, after NASA officials this week signed off on Crew Dragon’s design, ending a nearly 10-year development phase for SpaceX under the agency’s public-private crew program.
'The history being made this time is we’re launching what we call an operational flight to the International Space Station,' NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said during a press conference at Kennedy Space Center.
However, Elon Musk's presence at the event is not yet confirmed as Musk himself on Thursday said that he took four coronavirus tests on the same day, with two returning negative and two producing positive results.
Elon Musk usually attends such high-profile SpaceX missions in person. But this time due to the risks of corona, he may miss attending the mission.
According to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, the agency policy requires employees to quarantine and self-isolate after testing positive for the disease, 'so we anticipate that will be taking place.'
Whether Musk came into contact with the astronauts was unclear, but unlikely since the crew has been in routine quarantine for weeks prior to their flight on Saturday.
NASA contracted SpaceX and Boeing in 2014 to develop competing space capsules aimed at replacing its shuttle program that ended in 2011 and weaning off dependence on Russian rockets to send U.S. astronauts to space.
SpaceX’s final test of its capsule came in August, after the company launched and returned the first astronauts from U.S. soil on a trip to the ISS in nearly a decade. Boeing’s first crewed test mission with its Starliner capsule is planned for late next year.
(With inputs from Reuters)
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 "Weather delays SpaceX capsule Resilience's launch to Sunday")
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