SpaceX has abandoned the launch of a replacement crew of four astronauts to the International Space Station that would have set in motion the homecoming of two astronauts who have been stranded there for nine months.
SpaceX called off the flight after finding a last-minute technical issue with the rocket’s launch pad, officials said on a livestream of the launch countdown.
It was not immediately clear when the next launch opportunity would be. The reason for the scrub suggests that SpaceX and NASA could try to launch again in coming days.
NASA had been set to launch a SpaceX rocket from Florida carrying a replacement crew for the ISS in a mission that would set up the return to Earth of Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. The pair have been stuck at the space station for nine months after a trip on Boeing’s faulty Starliner.
The US space agency had moved up the mission by two weeks after President Donald Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, called for the pair to be brought back earlier than NASA had planned.
A planned eight-day stay on the orbiting station has dragged on for Wilmore and Williams, a pair of veteran astronauts and US Navy test pilots. Starliner returned to Earth without them last year.
SpaceX’s rocket had been scheduled to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral with a crew of two US astronauts and one astronaut each from Japan and Russia.
Wilmore and Williams have worked on research and maintenance with the space station’s other astronauts and are safe, according to NASA. Earlier in March, Williams said she was looking forward to seeing her family and pet dogs upon returning home.
“It’s been a roller-coaster for them, probably a little bit more so than for us,” Williams said of her family.
“We’re here, we have a mission – we’re just doing what we do every day, and every day is interesting because we’re up in space and it’s a lot of fun.”
The flight, known as Crew-10, normally would be considered a routine astronaut rotation. Instead, it has become entangled in politics as Trump and Musk have sought – without offering evidence – to blame former president Joe Biden for the astronauts’ delayed return.
The demands by Trump and Musk for an earlier return were an unusual intervention in NASA’s human spaceflight operations. The mission previously had a target date of March 26, but NASA swapped a delayed SpaceX capsule with a different one that would be ready sooner.
When the new crew arrives aboard the station, Wilmore and Williams and two others – NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov – can return to Earth in a capsule that has been attached to the station since September, as part of the prior Crew-9 mission.
-AAP
Weinstein in court ahead of looming MeToo retrial
Weinstein in court ahead of looming MeToo retrial