Not Yet Sanctioned By Nature, NASA-SpaceX Rocket Launch Was Postponed

Cancellation of NASA-SpaceX rocket launch (Twitter @NASA)

JAKARTA - NASA and SpaceX's commercial rocket launch missions had to be postponed indefinitely. The failure of this mission was due to bad weather in Florida.

Initially, two astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will take off using the Crew Dragon capsule launched from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, United States (US) on Wednesday, May 27 at 16.33 local time (03.33 WIB). However, due to worsening weather, the planned launch of the historic mission had to be postponed until 30 May.

. @ AstroBehnken and @Astro_Doug before Crew Dragon flight pic.twitter.com/BVDlvTZxS9

- SpaceX (SpaceX) May 27, 2020

"It won't work for this," said someone on top of the mission control audio leading up to the flight as The Verge reported Thursday, May 28.

The main cause was thunderstorms in the area around Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the Falcon 9 rocket was preparing to take off. Thunderstorms are very dangerous to launch.

If the rocket flies close enough, the lightning can hit the vehicle and cause serious damage to the mission. Mission control originally predicted that the weather would improve 10 minutes after launch. However, the weather said differently until the launch had to be canceled.

"We continue to break several different weather rules that we now hope are unclear in time to allow today's launch. We will go ahead and end today's launch effort," said SpaceX launch director Mike Taylor about 20 minutes before the launch. planned.

For information, the launch on Saturday will be held at 15:22 EDT (1922 GMT). If that doesn't work, SpaceX can try again on Sunday May 31 at 15:00 EDT (1900 GMT). It is known, the launch of Demo-2 cannot just determine the schedule, the capsule must be launched at a certain time, when the space station is in a certain place in its orbital path.

As is well known, this Demo-2 mission will be a milestone for the entire country and also for SpaceX. Because previously, no human orbital spacecraft has been launched from the US since NASA retired from the space shuttle fleet in July 2011.

"We are not going to launch today." Due to the weather conditions, the launch is scrubbing. Our next opportunity will be Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 pm ET. Live #LaunchAmerica coverage will begin at 11am ET. pic.twitter.com/c7R1AmLLYh

- NASA (NASA) May 27, 2020

Since then, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft has been the only vehicle for astronauts to and from the ISS, at a cost of about $ 90 million per seat. NASA is unhappy with this dependence and is relying on SpaceX and Boeing to solve this problem.

Previously, it was reported that if this mission was successful, the launch of Dragon Crew would be the first time carried out by a private company. NASA hopes to entrust "low Earth orbit" space travel to the private sector to free up more costs on more distant missions.

When the mission finally progresses, Crew Dragon will go to the ISS, and will probably stay there until August. If it fulfills its mission and is certified safe, that means America will no longer rely on Russian Soyuz rockets for access to space probes.