Photo by Charles Boyer, Talk of Titusville.
With about six hours left in the countdown to liftoff, SpaceX announced that they are canceling today’s planned launch of Falcon 9 carrying four astronauts to orbit aboard a Crew Dragon to the International Space Station. The mission on behalf of Axiom Space is dubbed Axiom-3 and will now launch NET Thursday, January 18, 2024 at 4:47 PM EST.
In a post on the X platform, SpaceX stated that the delay “allows teams to complete pre-launch checkouts and data analysis on the vehicle.” No other reason was given today.
In a January 16th press conference, however, SpaceX did outline some areas of concern: first, parachutes in an uncrewed Dragon mission had performed differently than expected and secondly, the connectors that mate the Crew Dragon capsule to Falcon 9 were torqued incorrectly. While those concerns were not cited in today’s announcement, they may be what mission managers and engineers want to review before committing to a crewed flight.
Weather
In their latest Mission Execution forecast, the 45th Weather Squadron of the US Space Force is calling for a 20% Probability Of Violation (POV), meaning there is a 80% chance of acceptable weather for tomorrow’s planned liftoff.
Update: a new forecast was issued at 12:45pm January 17, 2024 and the article updated to reflect the new POV probabilities.
Ascent corridor (the path the rocket takes on its way to orbit) may be a concern, as the 45th Weather Squadron highlights above. Otherwise, they are calling for a small chance of rain and perhaps some issues with cumulus clouds at launch time, but otherwise, they expect good weather.
Photo: Charles Boyer, Talk of Titusville
Launch Trajectory
Northeast, as is customary for launches destined for ISS.
Launch Viewing
SpaceX
A live webcast of this mission will begin on X @SpaceX about two hours prior to launch. The latest launch information can be found here.
NASA-TV
NASA will offer a webcast on NASA-TV and also YouTube. Their broadcast starts about one hour prior to liftoff.
Spaceflight Now
Spaceflight Now will stream coverage on YouTube starting about two hours prior to launch.