Why shuttle launch delay

Officials tracked weather and sea conditions in downrange abort zones throughout the week in hopes the forecast would improve enough to fall within safety criteria. But the abort zone conditions were another story, with winds and waves exceeding limits for a safe splashdown of the Crew Dragon spacecraft. NASA and SpaceX managers were particularly focused on a part of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Carolinas and the Mid-Atlantic states, where the Crew Dragon might splash down in the event of a rocket failure during staging a few minutes after liftoff.

The offshore conditions are forecast to improve in time for the backup launch opportunity Wednesday at a. After docking at the space station, Chari and his crewmates will be greeted by the seven astronauts and cosmonauts currently living on the outpost.

Once on their way, Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron and the European Space Agency's Matthias Maurer will move into the space station for six months, replacing four astronauts who have been living up there since April. In , a shuttle launch was delayed when the flight's commander came down with a cold. And in , an astronaut was yanked from Apollo 13 shortly before launch after being exposed to German measles. He never came down with measles, and later joined the herculean effort in Houston to save his colleagues from their aborted moon mission.

More recently, two Russian cosmonauts were replaced a couple months before their launch to the space station, after one of them suffered an eye injury. The space agency said the delay was not COVID related, nor was it a medical emergency, but did not identify the matter further or the astronaut involved. It is the second delay for the SpaceX mission, which had initially been scheduled to take off on Sunday before being grounded by the weather until Wednesday.

NASA delays moon landings as China becomes 'aggressive competitor' in space race. But it still can reveal a lot about our own universe. Collisions between the Parker Solar Probe and dust are so energetic the particles burst into plasma.

A human landing was 'not grounded in technical feasibility,' NASA administrator says. Sign up to receive Popular Science's emails and get the highlights. An Atlas V rocket launches. Weather The biggest reason rocket launches get scrubbed is the weather. Like science, tech, and DIY projects?