Washington:

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch to the Worldwide House Station was postponed on Monday, with officers citing issues with floor methods.

The SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 mission was scheduled to depart the Kennedy House Middle in Florida at 1:45 am (0645 GMT), carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and the second Emirati to voyage to area.

However simply two minutes earlier than lift-off, the launch was known as off, or “scrubbed”.

“At this time’s #Crew6 launch has been scrubbed on account of a difficulty with floor methods,” NASA posted on Twitter.

SpaceX stated shortly after that it had begun unloading gasoline from the rocket and the crew would disembark.

The launch will probably be rescheduled for a later date.

NASA’s Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, Russia’s Andrey Fedyaev and Sultan al-Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates are to spend six months on the orbiting station.

Neyadi, 41, would be the fourth astronaut from an Arab nation and the second from the oil-rich UAE to journey to area; his compatriot Hazzaa al-Mansoori flew an eight-day mission in 2019.

Neyadi described the upcoming mission as a “nice honor.”

Hoburg, the Endeavour pilot, and Fedyaev, the Russian mission specialist, may even be making their first area flights.

Fedyaev is the second Russian cosmonaut to fly to the ISS aboard a SpaceX rocket. NASA astronauts fly often to the station on Russian Soyuz craft.

House has remained a uncommon venue of cooperation between Moscow and Washington for the reason that Russian offensive in Ukraine positioned the 2 in sharp opposition.

Such exchanges have continued regardless of these tensions.

Bowen, a veteran of three area shuttle missions, stated politics hardly ever come up whereas in area.

“We’re all professionals. We hold centered on the mission itself,” the commander stated. “It is at all times been a fantastic relationship we have had with cosmonauts as soon as we get to area.”

Whereas aboard the ISS, the Crew-6 members will conduct dozens of experiments together with finding out how supplies burn in microgravity and researching coronary heart, mind and cartilage capabilities.

The present crew is the sixth to be transported by a SpaceX rocket to the ISS. The Endeavour capsule has flown into area thrice.

NASA pays SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the ISS roughly each six months.

The area company expects Crew-6 to have a handover of a number of days with the 4 members of Crew-5, who’ve been on the ISS since October. Crew-5 will then return to Earth.

Rescue capsule

Additionally aboard the ISS are cosmonauts Dmitry Petelin and Sergei Prokopyev, in addition to NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.

They’d been scheduled to return house on March 28 however the cooling system of their Soyuz MS-22 capsule was broken by a tiny meteoroid in December whereas docked with the ISS.

An uncrewed Russian Soyuz capsule, MS-23, took off on Friday from Kazakhstan to deliver the three astronauts house. They’re now scheduled to return to Earth in September.

Development of the ISS started in 1998 at a time of elevated US-Russia cooperation following the Chilly Struggle area race.

Russia has been utilizing the growing old however dependable Soyuz capsules to ferry astronauts into area for the reason that Sixties.

However in recent times, Russia’s area program has been beset by a litany of issues which have led to the lack of satellites and autos.

(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)