Crew Dragon flight to space station delayed by offshore weather
CBSN
NASA and SpaceX mission managers have decided to delay launch of a Crew Dragon astronaut ferry flight to the International Space Station, pushing liftoff from Sunday to Wednesday because of rough weather in the crew's abort landing zone.
Crew-3 commander Raja Chari, pilot Thomas Marshburn, Kayla Barron and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer had planned to blast off from historic pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 2:21 a.m. ET Sunday, kicking off a 22-hour rendezvous with the space station.
But just a few hours after a launch readiness review tentatively cleared the crew for blastoff, a meeting to discuss the weather along the Crew Dragon's northeasterly trajectory to orbit concluded with a "no-go" recommendation based on predicted rough seas where the capsule might have to splash down in an abort.
There's no making up for what Olympic hurdler Lashinda Demus lost on the day she finished .07 seconds behind a Russian opponent who, everyone later learned, was doping. What the American 400-meter hurdles champion will finally receive is a great day under the Eiffel Tower where she'll be presented with the gold medal she was denied 12 years ago at the London Olympics.