Due to bad weather, the mission to send three American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut to the International Space Station on Saturday was canceled.
NASA said that after SpaceX reported a delay in the launch, the agency will now aim for liftoff on Sunday at 10:53 p.m. (0353 GMT on Monday).
The four will be launched from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center aboard a Falcon 9 rocket by the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour.
Hours before Saturday night’s scheduled launch, SpaceX posted on X that “elevated winds” forced the delay.
It was the latest postponement for the launch, which initially was slated for February 22.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been providing astronaut launch services for NASA since 2020 under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, while a rival program by Boeing has yet to get going.
Leading the “Crew-8” mission, Matthew Dominick, along with fellow American Jeanette Epps, is making his first spaceflight. And for Alexander Grebenkin, a Russian, it will be the first.
This is doctor Michael Barratt’s third trip to the International Space Station. The space shuttles, which were decommissioned in 2011, were home to his first two.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, space collaboration between the US and Russia continues to be uncommon.
The US last month imposed fresh sanctions on 500 Russian targets, seeking also to exact a cost for the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a Siberian prison.
The crew will do studies like as growing organoids—artificially generated masses of cells that resemble organs—using stem cells to research degenerative diseases and utilizing the microgravity condition to allow for three-dimensional cell growth that is not feasible on Earth.
The US was closely monitoring a “small leak” on the Russian side of the research platform, Joel Montalbano, NASA’s International Space Station program manager, said reporters. This was the latest in a string of problems on the Russian end.
A hatch is currently closed to isolate the leak from the rest of the ISS.
