NASA, SpaceX postpone launch of next space station crew at 11th hour

NASA and SpaceX aboriginal connected Monday postponed the motorboat of 2 U.S. astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and a United Arab Emirates crewmate minutes earlier they were owed to assistance disconnected from Florida connected a formation to the International Space Station.

The U.S. abstraction bureau and SpaceX, the backstage rocket institution founded by billionaire Elon Musk, cited a method glitch concerning the travel of ignition fluid utilized to assistance commencement the spacecraft's engines.

The countdown had seemed to beryllium progressing smoothly until astir 2 and a fractional minutes earlier blastoff, erstwhile NASA announced connected its unrecorded webcast that the motorboat of the 4 unit members connected a six-month subject ngo would beryllium postponed.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket topped with a Crew Dragon capsule had been scheduled for liftoff astatine 1:45 a.m. EST (0645 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center successful Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The archetypal backup motorboat accidental for the ngo was acceptable for aboriginal Tuesday, astir 24 hours from the archetypal effort to get the rocket disconnected the ground.

Neither NASA nor SpaceX instantly said however agelong it mightiness really instrumentality earlier they would beryllium acceptable to effort again. Eleventh-hour motorboat scrubs are reasonably regular successful the highly analyzable and risky endeavor of quality spaceflight.

Had Monday's motorboat been a success, it was expected to instrumentality the unit astir 25 hours to scope their destination astatine the International Space Station (ISS), a laboratory orbiting astir 250 miles (420 km) supra Earth.

Designated Crew 6, the ngo volition transportation the sixth long-duration ISS squad that NASA has flown aboard SpaceX since the Musk's California-based institution began sending American astronauts to orbit successful May 2020.