Watch Elon Musk's SpaceX Launch Of Resupply To Space Station Thursday
UPDATE: 7 p.m. EDT — Lightning Thursday forced a delay in the launch of the SpaceX resupply mission to the International Space Station. The launch was called off with just 30 minutes left in the countdown. The next opportunity for the launch is Saturday at 5:07 p.m. EDT.
Original story
While Elon Musk is considering leaving President Donald Trump's advisory council his company SpaceX is getting ready, along with NASA, to launch a resupply mission to the International Space Station.
The resupply launch is scheduled for Thursday evening, around 5:55 p.m. EDT., weather permitting. As of Tuesday morning Air Force meteorologists were predicting a 70 percent chance of acceptable weather for the launch. That missing 30 percent was due to some anvil and cumulus clouds in the forecast for that time of the day, NASA said.
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Not only will the launch be historic because it is one of SpaceX's privately contracted launches with NASA, but it will mark the 100th launch from launch complex 39A. The historic site of the Apollo launches, including the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, at the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida.
SpaceX conducted a test fire of the Falcon 9 rocket that will bring up the resupply on Sunday afternoon. The SpaceX Dragon craft will be filled with nearly 6,000 pounds of research, supplies and hardware for the ISS. The members on the space station crew have a series of experiments they are scheduled to conduct with materials from the resupply, including the study of neutron stars and fire in space.
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The Falcon 9 rocket is 230 feet tall and will boost the Dragon capsule into space, this stage of the mission will take about 10 minutes. Then once the Dragon is in preliminary orbit it will deploy its solar arrays to enable a series of thruster firings to eventually make its way to the space station.
Once it reaches the station, an arm on the station will extend and astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer will control the arm to grapple the Dragon capsule. The mission control back on Earth will control the arm to rotate and install the capsule to the Harmony module on the station before crew begins unpacking the capsule, according to NASA. The grappling and installation process is scheduled to happen Sunday. Coverage for that event will begin around 8:30 a.m. with the installation expected to begin around 11:30 a.m. if all goes according to plan, NASA said.
The capsule will remain attached to the station for about a month or so and then it'll return to Earth with completed experiments and their results. The plan is for the craft to splash down off the coast of California in early July.
There will be a prelaunch news conference at 4 p.m. EDT and you can watch the SpaceX NASA resupply mission launch live beginning at 5:15 p.m. EDT Thursday here:
The launch will be followed by a post-launch news conference at 7:30 p.m. If the weather does not permit a launch Thursday, the next launch date is will be Saturday with coverage beginning at 4:30 p.m. for a 5:07 p.m. launch.
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