NASA and SpaceX moved ahead with planned prelaunch activities at Pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday, though the liftoff date for the Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station had to be delayed due to expected impacts from Tropical Storm Helene.
In a statement released late Tuesday afternoon, NASA announced that the launch, originally scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 26, had been postponed until Saturday, Sept. 28 at 1:17 p.m. EDT (1717 UTC). The agency said the storm, which is expected to strengthen into a hurricane by Wednesday morning, will likely have impacts on Florida's Space Coast.
“Although Tropical Storm Helene is moving through the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to impact northwestern Florida, the storm system is large enough that strong winds and rainfall are expected to occur in the Cape Canaveral and Merritt Island regions on Florida’s east coast,” NASA wrote in a blog post.
In the afternoon, NASA, SpaceX and Space Force Guardians with Space Launch Delta 45 conducted a dry run. They simulated the day's activities with NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Alexandr Gorbunov in the loop and went over the countdown process.
Following the dry dress rehearsal, SpaceX will conduct a static fire test of its Falcon 9 rocket. The nine Merlin engines at the base of the rocket, B1085 in SpaceX's fleet, will ignite for a few seconds before shutting down.
Astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov head to Pad 40 on Tuesday afternoon for a countdown rehearsal ahead of the Crew 9 mission, scheduled to launch no earlier than Saturday. Watch live footage from Cape Canaveral: https://t.co/RyxdGWHY6m image.twitter.com/GsWqR9cWMj
— Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) September 24, 2024
B1085 previously launched in the Starlink Mission 10-5 on August 20, 2024. The reason it launched a Starlink mission before a crewed flight is because it suffered water intrusion during its journey from SpaceX's testing facility in McGregor, Texas, to Florida.
“Some moisture leaked into the (liquid oxygen) fuel tank of that rocket as it was transported from McGregor to Cape Canaveral. The desiccant system didn’t work like it was supposed to,” Steve Stich, director of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, said during an Aug. 7 press conference. “That desiccant system is supposed to keep the air dry, and so it didn’t work like it was supposed to. So we had to dry out those tanks and then replace some components on the vehicle.”
B1085, along with its new second stage and Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft, rolled out of the hangar at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) during the early morning hours of Tuesday. The rocket was turned upright shortly after 9:30 a.m. EDT (1:30 p.m. UTC).
The launch marks the first crewed mission to launch from SLC-40, which provides NASA and SpaceX with redundant capabilities to launch Dragon missions from both SpaceX launch pads in Florida.
Following launch, Dragon Freedom will remain docked to the ISS until February 2025. It will depart with Hague and Gorbunov along with NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams.
NASA decided to use the Dragon spacecraft to bring Wilmore and Williams home after determining that there was enough uncertainty surrounding the Boeing Starliner spacecraft's thrusters that it was not comfortable having it serve as the crew return vehicle at the end of the crew flight test mission.
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