SpaceX’s next astronaut launch has been delayed by at least 24 hours.
The company was counting down to the launch of the four-person Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA in the early hours of Friday (August 25) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But now, that won’t happen.
“NASA and SpaceX will pause launch opportunity on Friday, August 25 for the agency’s Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station,” NASA officials said in an emailed statement Thursday night (August 24). “Launch target, now at 3:27 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 26, for SpaceX’s seventh crew rotation mission to NASA’s Microgravity Laboratory. More to come.”
“The new launch date provides teams with additional time to complete and discuss analysis. Vehicles remain in good condition and crew are ready to fly,” SpaceX Added by X (formerly Twitter) Thursday evening, without identifying the issue(s) requiring further analysis.
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Crew-7 will send four astronauts representing four different space agencies to the International Space Station for about six months. They’ll get there aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance capsule, which already has two flights to the orbiting laboratory.
The crew members are NASA astronaut Yasmine Mokbly, Endurance Commander; Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency, from Denmark, who will act as pilot; and Satoshi Furukawa and Konstantin Borisov, of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, respectively. Furukawa and Borisov will be Crew-7 mission specialists.
As its name suggests, Crew-7 will be SpaceX’s seventh operational mission to the space station for NASA. But it will be Elon Musk’s eleventh human spaceflight overall.
One of those previous missions is still on the International Space Station. Crew-6 arrived at the orbiting laboratory in early March, and is scheduled to depart about five days after Crew-7’s arrival.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 11:45 PM EST on August 24 to include SpaceX’s post on X.
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