SpaceX will have to wait a few days to make history.
Elon Musk’s company was scheduled to launch its first-ever crewed mission, a test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) called Demo-2, this afternoon (May 27) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But bad weather has nixed that plan, pushing the liftoff back to Saturday (May 30) at the earliest, NASA and SpaceX officials announced today.
“We continue to violate a couple different weather rules that we now do not expect to clear in time to allow for a launch today,” SpaceX launch director Mike Taylor said about 20 minutes before the planned liftoff. “We’re going to go ahead and end today’s launch attempt.”
Saturday’s launch would occur at 3:22 p.m. EDT (1922 GMT). If that doesn’t work out, SpaceX could try again on Sunday (May 31) at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT). (Demo-2 has an instantaneous launch window; the capsule must launch at a specific time, when the space station is at a certain spot in its orbital path.)
