SpaceX and Nasa’s historic crewed launch aborted over bad weather
- Countdown halted less than 17 minutes before Falcon 9 rocket was expected to lift off from Kennedy Space Centre
- Mission would have marked first space flight of Nasa astronauts from US soil in almost a decade
SpaceX, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private rocket company, was forced by foul weather to scrub a planned launch on Wednesday of two Americans into orbit from Florida, a mission that would mark the first space flight of Nasa astronauts from US soil in nine years.
The countdown was halted less than 17 minutes before the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was due to lift off from the Kennedy Space Centre, propelling Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on a 19-hour ride aboard the company’s newly designed Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station.
The next launch window is set for Saturday afternoon, when SpaceX will make a second attempt to send the astronauts into orbit.
The scrubbed launch came on a day with off-and-on rain over Florida, and the National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for the area. Flight operations managers were monitoring a number of ominous weather conditions, even as crews began loading the rocket with fuel.
The word finally came down that the atmosphere was so electrically charged that the spacecraft was in danger of getting hit by a bolt of lightning.