CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – SpaceX on Wednesday bumped its next astronaut launch by a day because of dangerously high waves and wind offshore.
Liftoff is now scheduled for early Friday morning from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, when better weather is expected. The SpaceX Dragon capsule has the ability to abort the launch all the way to orbit in case of an emergency.
That’s why good weather is needed not only at the Florida launch site, but all the way up the East Coast and across the North Atlantic to Ireland.
The four astronauts — from the U.S., Japan and France — will spend six months at the International Space Station. This will be SpaceX's third launch of astronauts for NASA in less than a year.