The launch of a crew of four to the International Space Station from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center has been scrubbed.
Mission managers called off the launch with around five minutes remaining in the countdown.
The early-morning launch was scrubbed after teams at SpaceX identified an issue with the system that ignites the nine engines of the Falcon 9 rocket.
NASA and SpaceX have another chance to launch at 12:34 a.m. EST Thursday, March 2. That launch attempt depends on SpaceX fixing the issue with the ignition system, known as TEA-TEB.
Once launched, the members of Crew-6 -- two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates -- will spend up to six months on the I.S.S. conducting research and experiments. They’ll relieve the four people of the Crew-5 mission which arrived last October. That team is set to return to Earth in about a week.
NASA works with SpaceX to launch astronauts to the station. This will be the seventh time SpaceX has launched NASA astronauts into orbit and ninth overall it’s sent people to space since 2020.
