Space: The SpaceX mission is canceled two minutes before takeoff

A disappointment for SpaceX, Monday morning. The Falcon 9 rocket was scheduled to take off from Kennedy Space Center on Monday at 1:45 a.m. (7:45 a.m. in Switzerland). On board, the multicultural crew, Crew6, is the sixth to visit the International Space Station (ISS), during a regular rotation mission. The Dragon capsule on board, in which the crew was to travel, was due to dock with the International Space Station, after a flight of about a day.

But two minutes before take-off, it was cancelled. “Today’s #Crew6 launch has been canceled due to a ground systems issue,” NASA wrote on Twitter. SpaceX said shortly after the start of unloading fuel from the rocket and indicated that the crew would disembark. The launch will be delayed. Originally scheduled for Sunday, it was actually pushed back 24 hours to Tuesday by NASA.

Americans Stephen Bowen, Warren Hoburg, Russian Andrei Vidyaev, and Emirati Sultan Al Neyadi are scheduled to spend six months on the International Space Station. Sultan Al Neyadi, 41, will become the fourth astronaut from an Arab country in history, the second Emirati, and the first from his country to spend six months in space. His compatriot Hazzaa Al-Mansoori undertook the eight-day mission in 2019.

A rare field for collaboration

Russian cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev is also part of the mission at a time when tensions between Washington and Moscow are at a high point. It was already planned before the Moscow attack that the Russians would fly with SpaceX and the Americans on Russian Soyuz ships. The space station is one of the few areas of cooperation still ongoing between the two countries.

The crew capsule, called Endeavor, has flown into space three times. NASA hires the services of the American company SpaceX to send its astronauts to the flight laboratory approximately every six months. They conduct scientific experiments there and ensure the maintenance of the station, which has been permanently inhabited for more than 22 years.

Crew-6 will replace the four Crew-5 members (two Americans, one Russian and one Japanese), who arrived in October 2022 and will return to Earth on their SpaceX ship, a few days after delivery. On board the International Space Station, there are also three other passengers (two Russians and an American) who arrived on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The last one took place last December LeakWhich made it dangerous for the three passengers to return to Earth on the ship. So the Russian space agency Roscomos sent a rescue ship, which docked safely to the International Space Station on Saturday.

(AFP)Show comments