NASA SpaceX’s first manned mission was delayed until Sunday due to strong winds

NASA delayed the launch of the first manned SpaceX mission to the International Space Station due to bad weather.

The crew, consisting of a Japanese astronaut and three Americans, was scheduled to take off on Saturday but was postponed to Sunday due to winds that could interfere with the safety of operations.

The launch was postponed to just after midnight on Monday morning UK time “due to onshore winds and readiness for first stage booster recovery.”

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced the news on Twitter, saying the mission will begin at 7:27 PM EST on Sunday, November 15.

For NASA, it will mark the beginning of using private firms as a “taxi service” to fly its crew to and from the space station.

“The story made this time is that we are launching what we call an operational flight to the International Space Station,” Bridenstine told reporters at a news conference yesterday.

The US space agency announced this week that it has certified SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket to carry astronauts, making it the first commercial human spaceflight system in history.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said, “This is a great honor that inspires confidence in our attempt to return to the Moon, travel to Mars and ultimately help humanity go multi-planetary.”

It comes after a demonstration flight in May, which was the first time a manned mission has taken off from U.S. soil since the Space Shuttle program ended in 2011.

This meant that NASA depended on the Russian space agency Roscosmos to transport its astronauts to the space station, at a cost of approximately US $ 90 million (£ 67 million) per seat.

In 2014, it awarded SpaceX and Boeing contracts to provide manned launch services to the space station as part of its commercial manning program.

The SpaceX certification ends NASA’s dependence on Russia and comes with a price tag of approximately US $ 55 million (£ 40 million) per astronaut.

Phil McAlister, director of commercial space flight development at NASA, said in a statement, “NASA’s partnership with US private industry is changing the history of human spaceflight by opening up access to orbit low Earth and the International Space Station to more people, more science and more business opportunities.

“We are truly at the beginning of a new era of human space flight.”

In May, Elon Musk’s company made history when it became the first private company to send humans into orbit.

US astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley traveled to the space station and returned as part of a mission to demonstrate SpaceX’s ability to safely carry out manned missions.

The current mission, named Crew 1, will see the Crew Dragon capsule transport NASA’s Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover and Shannon Walker, as well as Japan’s Soichi Noguchi, to the space station.

The astronauts will spend six months in the orbiting space laboratory, conducting scientific experiments and performing various other tasks.

The crew is now expected to take off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 00:27 UK time on Monday.

Shortly after take-off, the Falcon 9 rocket will separate into a first stage and a second stage.

The first leg will return to a SpaceX landing ship stationed off Florida, while the second part of the rocket continues its journey with the Crew Dragon.

Once in orbit, the Crew Dragon will separate from the second stage and travel at approximately 17,000 miles per hour.

The aircraft is expected to dock at the space station after a journey that will last approximately nine hours.

The astronauts will join three other space station residents – NASA’s Kate Rubins and Russia’s Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov – to join the Expedition 64 crew.

Meanwhile, NASA’s other rental taxi service, Boeing, isn’t expected to fly its first crew until next summer.