Launch to ISS delayed again over weather: NASA

The International Space Station is seen from the space shuttle Atlantis on July 19, 2011, after it left the orbiting complex. (NASA via AP, File)

WASHINGTON -- NASA is now aiming to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, in another delay over weather conditions, the U.S. agency announced Tuesday.

It is targeting Feb. 13 for the lift-off of Crew-12’s mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a window opening at 5:15 a.m. local time.

“Mission teams completed a weather review Tuesday morning and have waived off the Thursday, Feb. 12, launch opportunity due to forecast weather conditions along Crew-12’s flight path,” NASA said in a statement.

Weather at the site in Florida has been in fact favourable, NASA officials told a briefing Monday, but higher winds forecast across the rest of the East Coast are to blame for the delays.

These winds could complicate any potential emergency manoeuvres, like an early splashdown of the spacecraft carrying the astronauts, for example.

If Friday’s launch goes as planned, the astronauts should arrive at the space station by approximately 3:15 p.m. on Saturday.

Crew-12 is composed of Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, along with French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

They remain in quarantine in NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, waiting to blast off.

The travellers will replace Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January a month earlier than planned in the first medical evacuation in the space station’s history.

ISS, a scientific laboratory orbiting 400 kilometres above Earth, has since been staffed by a skeleton crew of three.

Continuously inhabited for the last quarter-century, the aging ISS is scheduled to be de-orbited and crashed into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2030.