Crew Dragon flight to space station delayed by offshore weather

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.