CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled to launch the mission, called Crew-2
“I’m sure you heard that you probably heard we’re going to have to delay a day,” NASA’s Bob Cabana, Kennedy Space Center director, told reporters in a morning briefing. “We are not going to be able to launch tomorrow morning.”
“Although the weather is probably going to look great here at the launch site, we’re worried about the downrange wind and wave heights in case of an abort,” he added.
Related: SpaceX is launching 200 experiments to space on Crew-2 flight SpaceX’s Crew-2 astronaut mission for NASA
Crew Dragon
On Tuesday, launch weather officer Brian Cisek of the 45th Space Wing told Space.com that the weather is looking very favorable for launch
“As soon as this front moves through, it’s going to be absolutely beautiful on Friday morning,” Cabana said. “So we’re going to launch then.”
Related: SpaceX’s Crew-2 astronaut mission in photos
From left to right: NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet and JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide pose for a group photo in the crew access arm. (Image credit: SpaceX)
The international crew on Dragon plethora of research experiments
If Friday’s launch goes as planned, the Crew-2 astronauts will strap into the Dragon capsule early Friday morning and arrive at the International Space Station on Saturday at 5:10 a.m. EDT (0910 GMT). The Crew-2 astronauts will join seven other crewmates already onboard the space station, including the four astronauts of SpaceX’s Crew-1 mission for NASA who are scheduled to return to Earth April 28.
SpaceX is one of two commercial companies with multibillion-dollar contracts to fly astronauts for NASA. (The other company is Boeing, which has yet to fly astronauts.) Crew-2 is SpaceX’s third crewed flight for NASA after the launch of Crew-1 in November 2020 and a Demo-2 mission in May 2020.
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