Axiom private mission to ISS delayed because of weather

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UPI

June 9 (UPI) -- SpaceX, NASA and Axiom Space postponed Tuesday's scheduled launch of the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station because of unfavorable weather conditions in the Dragon spacecraft's flight path.

The Axiom Mission 4 launch had been scheduled for 8:22 a.m. Tuesday from the Kennedy Space Center's pad 39A, NASA said in a news release Monday.

They now are targeting 8 a.m. EDT on Wednesday for the next launch opportunity. The backup opportunity is 7:37 a.m. Thursday.

Axiom Space and SpaceX are planning coverage and NASA separately in the morning.

Falcon 9's first stage would land on Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

This is the first flight for the Dragon spacecraft and second for the first-stage booster, which previously launched a Starlink mission

The targeted docking time is one day later. There are nine people currently on the ISS.

Peggy Whitson, 65, a former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space, will command the commercial mission.

The crew also includes pilot Shubhanshu Shukla with the Indian Space Research Organization, and mission specialists with the European Space Agency, Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary.

This would be the first time ISRO will send an astronaut to the space station as well as ESA astronauts from Hungary and Poland.

The crew members plan to conduct 60 scientific experiments and demonstrations "focused on human research, Earth observation, and life, biological, and material sciences," according to SpaceX.

Axiom Space, which is based in Houston and founded in 2016, is building the first commercial space station with deployment planned in the late 2020s.

The Axiom 3 mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center's Pad 39A on Jan. 18, 2024. It was the first spaceflight entirely with European citizens.

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