SpaceX’s next astronaut launch has been delayed by at least 24 hours.
The company was on the countdown to launch a four-man Crew 7 mission to NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) early in the morning on Friday (August 25) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But that doesn’t happen now.
“NASA and SpaceX are canceling the opportunity to launch the Crew 7 mission to the International Space Station on Friday, August 25,” a NASA official said in an emailed statement Thursday night. . “The current launch is targeted for 3:27 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 26 for SpaceX’s seventh crew rotation mission to NASA’s Microgravity Laboratory. More to come.”
“The new launch date will give the team additional time to complete and discuss the analysis. The aircraft remains in good health and the crew is ready for flight.” said SpaceX. Add via X (formerly Twitter) did not specify which issues required further analysis on Thursday night.
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Crew-7 will send four astronauts representing four different space agencies to the ISS, where they will stay for about six months. They plan to get there aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule Endurance, which has already scheduled two round trips to the orbiting lab.
The crew is NASA astronaut Jasmine Mogberg, commander of the Endurance. Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency from Denmark will serve as the pilot. Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Konstantin Borisov of the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Furukawa and Borisov become Crew-7 mission specialists.
As its name suggests, Crew-7 will be SpaceX’s seventh operational mission to NASA’s space station. However, it will be the 11th manned space flight for Elon Musk’s company.
One of the previous missions is still on the ISS. Crew 6 is scheduled to arrive at the orbiting lab in early March and depart about five days after Crew 7’s arrival.
Editor’s Note: This article was updated on August 24th at 11:45pm EDT to include SpaceX’s post about X.