Weather played spoilsport on a day that would have otherwise marked the beginning of a new chapter in human’s space exploration history. The historic SpaceX astronaut mission could not take off due to bad weather, and was ultimately called off. SpaceX and NASA will now attempt the Demo-2 mission on coming Saturday, which is the second launch window out of proposed three, for this mission.
SpaceX will now attempt to launch the mission on Saturday May 30th, at 17:20 UTC time.
The historic Launch will take place from NASA’s iconic 39A Launch Complex at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are the two astronauts who will create history along with SpaceX.
The mission is the final piece of testing that SpaceX has to go through, post which the Crew dragon capsule and the Falcon 9 rocket will be certified for regular operational use by NASA.
In preparation for Demo-2, SpaceX completed a number of major milestones for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. In terms of tests, SpaceX completed a whopping 700 tests to get to the current stage. In March 2019, SpaceX completed an end-to-end test flight of Crew Dragon without NASA astronauts onboard, making Dragon the first American spacecraft to autonomously dock with the International Space Station and safely return to Earth.
Another major test that the company succeeded at, is demonstration of Crew Dragon’s in-flight launch escape capability. Perhaps the most crucial of all, the escape capability is important to reliably carry crew to safety in the unlikely event of an emergency on the launch pad or at any point during ascent.
