by Tropical Storm Nicole pushed back the liftoff of SpaceX’s next cargo mission to the International Space Station (ISS) by three days.
The robotic flight, known as CRS-26, was scheduled to lift off from Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida on November 18. But Nicole, which hit Florida’s Space Coast as a Category 1 hurricane on Thursday (November 10), changed that plan.
“NASA and SpaceX are now targeting no earlier than Monday, November 21, pending range approval, for the launch of the company’s 26th commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station for the agency,” NASA officials wrote in a briefing on Thursday. (opens in new tab).
“Mission teams will continue to monitor any additional potential impacts as the storm progresses,” they added.
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CRS-26 will send SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The cargo ship is loaded with supplies, science experiments and hardware, including a set of advanced solar arrays that will boost the orbiting lab’s power output.
Another high-profile mission is scheduled to lift off from KSC in the coming days as well — NASA’s Artemis 1, which sits atop the center’s Pad 39B.
Artemis 1 will use NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) to launch an uncrewed Orion capsule into lunar orbit. The agency is currently targeting November 16 for the long-awaited liftoff, though that could change. Mission team members have yet to fully assess how the Artemis 1 stack weathered the storm.
We’ll know more about that soon. NASA is holding a press conference today (November 11) at 3 p.m. EST (1800 GMT) to discuss her latest plans for Artemis 1. You can listen live here on Space.com.
Dragon is one of three robotic spacecraft currently flying cargo to the ISS. The other two, Russia’s Progress vehicle and Northop Grumman’s Cygnus, are expendable and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere when their missions are over. Dragon, by contrast, is reusable, descending to Earth safely for parachute-assisted ocean launches.
Two Progress vehicles and one Cygnus are currently docked at the ISS. Cygnus arrived on Wednesday (November 9), making the orbital rendezvous despite only deploying one of its two solar arrays. A Dragon is also attached to the orbiting lab, but this is a crew vehicle. the capsule is carrying SpaceX’s Crew-5 mission for NASA, which carried four astronauts to the ISS last month.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or up Facebook (opens in new tab).
