CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Last-minute technical trouble forced SpaceX to call off Monday\u2019s attempt to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.
\nThe countdown was halted with just two minutes remaining until liftoff from Kennedy Space Center. With just a split second to blast off, there was no time to deal with the problem, which involved the engine ignition system.
\nSpaceX delayed the launch until at least Thursday.
\nStrapped into the capsule atop the Falcon rocket were two NASA astronauts, one Russian cosmonaut and one astronaut from the United Arab Emirates. They had to wait until all the fuel was drained from the rocket \u2014 an hourlong process \u2014 before getting out.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ll be sitting here waiting,\u201d commander Stephen Bowen assured everyone. \u201cWe\u2019re all feeling good.\u201d
\nBowen and his crew \u2014 including the first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates assigned to a monthslong mission, Sultan al-Neyadi \u2014 will replace four space station residents who have been up there since October.
\nOfficials said the problem involved ground equipment used for loading the engine ignition fluid. The launch team could not be sure there was a full load. A SpaceX engineer likened this critical system to spark plugs for a car.<\/p>\n
Apnews<\/p>\n
Tags\uff1aUnited States, manned rocket<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) \u2014 Last-minute technical trouble forced SpaceX to call off Monday\u2019s attempt to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA. The countdown was halted with just two minutes remaining until liftoff from Kennedy Space Center. With just a split second to blast off, there was no time to deal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":6562,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[2576,2642,2643],"class_list":["post-6561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-last","tag-minute","tag-spacex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6563,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6561\/revisions\/6563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}