NASA and high-tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX has announced a 24-hour weather delay of their planned launch of four astronauts into orbit for NASA's first full-fledged human mission using a privately owned spacecraft.
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The lift-off time slipped from Saturday to Sunday evening due to forecasts of gusty, onshore winds over Florida - remnants of Tropical Storm Eta - that would have made a return landing for the Falcon 9 rocket's reusable booster stage difficult, NASA officials said.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule was rescheduled for launch atop the Falcon 9 at 7.27pm EST on Sunday (11.27am AEDT on Monday) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
The crew for the flight to the International Space Station includes three American astronauts - Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and the mission commander, Mike Hopkins, a US Air Force colonel who is to be sworn into the fledgling US Space Force once aboard the orbiting laboratory.
The fourth crew member is Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, making his third trip to orbit after flying on the US space shuttle in 2005 and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 2009.
The journey to the space station - lengthened from about eight hours to a little more than a day by the new launch time - is considered SpaceX's first "operational" mission for the Crew Dragon.
A so-called test flight of the vehicle to and from the space station with two crewmen aboard the Dragon in August marked the first space flight of NASA astronauts launched from US soil in nine years, following the end of the shuttle program.
NASA officials only just signed off on Crew Dragon's final design this week, capping a nearly 10-year development phase for SpaceX under the space agency's public-private crew program.
Australian Associated Press
