Weather was the only concern, according to NASA during the live streams.Įven with all of the exceptional planning ahead of this SpaceX launch, NASA and SpaceX can't control the weather (not yet anyway). The good news is that everything technical with the SpaceX craft and NASA crew was 'go for liftoff' on both days when the hatch door successfully closed. Blame Newtown's law of universal gravity, if you'd like. Both Saturday's successful launch and Wednesday's scrubbed launch had what's known as an 'instantaneous launch window', meaning due orbital mechanics a delay wasn't possible if the crew wanted to get to the International Space Station (ISS) on time and lock in accurately. Waiting even ten minutes wasn't an option, though. If they would have been able to wait ten minutes beyond the countdown, they could have cleared those three violations, according to SpaceX and NASA officials. NASA has strict weather rules for clearing spacecraft launches and noted that three weather violations existed, including the chance of the craft triggering 'natural lightning'. "I know there was a lot of disappointment today."īridenstine went on to explain the reasoning behind what we all saw: the SpaceX launch was scrubbed just 17 minutes inside the launch window, with NASA hanging on until the last minutes in an effort to save its efforts. It wouldn't have been time, as we saw this play out on Wednesday: "The weather got us," admitted NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine in a somber 30-second Twitter video on Wednesday. Up until the last few minutes of Saturday's SpaceX launch, weather was a concern. (Image credit: SpaceX) SpaceX launch weather concerns subsided The destination of this SpaceX launch is the International Space Station (ISS) for a one- to four-month duration for NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, according to our friends over at. It's the birth of commercially-backed human space travel. It's also the first time that a SpaceX reusable spacecraft has sent NASA astronauts into space. It's the first such launch on US soil in nearly a decade – since NASA retired the Space Shuttle nine years ago. Saturday's SpaceX Demo-2 mission was a delayed and a second attempt, but it was always going to be historic, as it's happening at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. "But given the fact that we are in late May – in Florida – we have to take every shot that we can get." They're glad that they did, despite the gloomy forecast. "We are predicting a 50/50 shot of going this time," said NASA administrator NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine at the top of the SpaceX live stream. It wasn't always clear that Saturday's launch would happen, even minutes before the launch window.
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