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On Friday evening, November 13, NASA and SpaceX announced that the first operational mission of the Crew Dragon commercial crew program would be delayed for 24 hours to Sunday November 15 at 7:27 PM EST (0027 GMT 11/16). During a pre-launch press conference for Crew-1, Benji Reed, SpaceX’s senior director of human spaceflight programs, said the delay was driven by impacts on recovery efforts caused by tropical storm Eta, which plagued the Florida for days.
Just before the press conference, United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully launched its Atlas V rocket after suffering delays earlier in the week. The NROL-101 mission carried a classified payload for the US government’s National Reconnaissance Office and was successfully launched from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 5:32 PM EST.
The Florida weather caused several launch delays
Weather, particularly that caused by tropical storm Eta, has caused a domino effect of delays for SpaceX and ULA in recent weeks. The ULA Atlas V 531 rocket stacked with the NROL-101 secret payload, initially scheduled for takeoff on November 3, was first delayed by damage to the upper stage environmental control system hardware.
According to the company’s CEO, Tory Bruno, as the rocket was transported from the ULA’s vertical integration facility (VIF) to the SLC-41 launch pad, very high winds caused damage to a conduit that controlled the range. a superior payload environmental control system. As a result, the rocket was returned to the VIF for replacement of the conduit. A launch attempt scheduled for the following day on Wednesday 4 November was canceled due to an unrelated problem with ground support equipment.
The NROL-101 mission would then be launched on Sunday, November 8, but that attempt was ultimately canceled due to the impending weather that would be brought across the Florida peninsula by Hurricane Eta. On Friday 6 November, the Atlas V 531 rocket and payload for the National Reconnaissance Office were again returned to the VIF for storm protection.
A final launch attempt was identified on Friday, November 13, just 22 hours before the scheduled launch of the SpaceX, NASA Crew-1 mission from nearby Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Fortunately, time lasted long enough for the ULA Atlas V 531 rocket to take off. After successfully taking off and deploying the payload, the mission was subsequently declared a full success by ULA.
Florida’s weather also caused delays in offshore recovery, affecting the manned launch
Similarly, the SpaceX and NASA Crew-1 mission also suffered setbacks due to inclement weather, although not at the launch site. Following the successful launch and landing of the Falcon 9 B1062 of the recent GPSII-SV04 mission on Thursday, November 5, SpaceX recovery teams fought unstable seas to return the booster and recovery droneship, Of Course I Still Love You ( OCISLY), safe and sound in Port Canaveral.
After securing the B1062 safely aboard OCISLY, the SpaceX GO Quest recovery ship took refuge in the port of Morehead City in North Carolina. The recovery crew would wait there to witness the recovery of the Crew-1 mission’s Falcon 9 B1061 rather than returning to Port Canaveral in Florida. The Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) droneship was intended to meet the GO Quest crew at the Crew-1 booster recovery zone before the end of the week.
Due to the strong winds and rough seas from tropical storm Eta, the OCISLY droneship embarked on an exceptionally boring 7-day journey hugging the east coast of the United States back to Port Canaveral. The delay caused a delay in the process of transferring the crew from OCISLY to JRTI, which in turn hampered the departure of the JRTI drone.
As tropical storm Eta shifted and receded from Florida, the Atlantic waters remained too rough for the JRTI drone to make up for lost time. Following the conclusion of the SpaceX crew-1 preliminary launch readiness review on Friday, November 13, it was announced that the delay in bringing the recovery drone to the B1061 landing zone would delay the crew’s launch attempt by 24 hours. -1.
Retrieving the Falcon 9 upgrade, of any mission, is a secondary objective of the mission. However, the recovery of Crew-1, B1061 Falcon 9 is important to both NASA and SpaceX, enough to delay a launch attempt. NASA and SpaceX have already designated this booster to be reused in the next Crew Dragon mission, Crew-2, scheduled for no earlier than March 30, 2021. To reuse a booster to save launch costs, it must first be successfully recovered.
If all goes according to plan, on Sunday 15 November three NASA astronauts and one astronaut from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will board the Crew Dragon Resilience and depart for the International Space Station at precisely 7:27 PM EST (0027 11/16) from LC -39A at Kennedy Space Center.
NASA and SpaceX will provide a live broadcast of all Crew-1 events starting at 3:15 PM EST on Sunday, November 15, on NASA TV and the SpaceX website.
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