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A SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft, C209, is seen atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image: SpaceX<\/p>\nA SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft, C209, is seen atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image: SpaceX<\/p>\n
SpaceX is counting down Friday for another attempt to launch a Cargo Dragon ship loaded with 6,500 pounds of science and supplies for the International Space Station after two delays earlier in the week due to bad weather.<\/p>\n
Liftoff of the resupply mission, atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, is scheduled for 6:05 p.m. EDT (2205 UTC). It will be SpaceX\u2019s 34th mission for NASA, funded by the agency\u2019s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contracts.<\/p>\n
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage starting about an hour prior to launch.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A slow-moving weather front, bringing thick clouds and thunderstorms to central Florida, stymied launch attempts on Tuesday and Wednesday. The countdown on Wednesday reached T-28 seconds before the launch director called a hold due to the presence of lightning-triggering anvil clouds in the vicinity of the launch pad.<\/p>\n
Launch was rescheduled for Friday so ground crews could reload \u2018late load\u2019 items with a short shelf life.<\/p>\n
With high pressure building over central Florida, creating drier conditions, forecasters are calling for a 90-percent chance of acceptable weather for launch, with only a small risk of violating the cumulus cloud rule.<\/p>\n
The Falcon 9 will depart Florida\u2019s Space Coast on a northeasterly trajectory to target a rendezvous with the orbiting space station.<\/p>\n
Less than eight minutes after liftoff, the first stage booster will return for a touchdown at Landing Zone 40 (LZ-40) adjacent to the launch pad at SLC-40. This will be the fourth booster recovery at this site and the 108th on-shore landing across the four pads SpaceX has used since 2015.<\/p>\n
SpaceX will launch the CRS-34 mission using Falcon 9 first stage booster B1096. This will be its sixth flight following the launches of NASA\u2019s IMAP, GPS III-9, NROL-77, Kuiper Falcon 01, and Starlink Group 6-87.<\/p>\n
This will also be the sixth flight for the Cargo Dragon spacecraft, serial number C209. It launched the CRS-22, -24, -27, -30, and -32 missions. This is the first time that a Cargo Dragon spacecraft will launch for a sixth time, but the second for the Dragon-2 program overall. The Crew Dragon Endeavour has already flown for a sixth time.<\/p>\n
Cargo Dragon will separate from the Falcon 9 second stage about 9.5 minutes into the mission, kicking off a nearly 37-hour orbital chase to catch up with the space station. It\u2019s set to dock with the orbiting outpost at about 6:59 a.m. EDT (1059 UTC) on Sunday, May 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft, C209, is seen atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":798947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[159,783,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-798946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116580428267035078","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}