Nasa SpaceX launch - as it happened: Historic liftoff cancelled moments before takeoff over weather
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Nasa has postponed its first launch of astronauts from US soil in nine years due to bad weather, just minutes before lift-off.
Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley were due to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) on a rocket and capsule system built by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's firm SpaceX.
But with rain and thunderstorms looming, the launch date has now been moved to Saturday at 20:22 pm UK time.
An estimated 1.7 million people from around the world tuned in to the launch from The Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
However, as the weather conditions became worse, the US space agency "scrubbed" the mission for safety reasons less than 17 minutes before the Falcon 9 rocket was due to take off, along with the Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Please allow a moment for the live blog to load
The arm is now moving away from the dragon capsule, leaving the astronauts on their own up there. (They were just given a briefing on how they would escape if anything were to go wrong.)
Here's how that looks from the arm itself.
The launch escape system is now armed, SpaceX says. That would allow the capsule to shoot off of the rocket if something went wrong and the astronauts had to get free.
That means the propellant – the rocket fuel – that will actually carry them into space can start being loaded in.
Propellant loading has started. Liquid oxygen and RP1 – rocket grade kerosene – is being put into the rocket.
We're now less than 30 minutes away from launch. And the countdown is continuing, which suggests the weather hasn't entirely got in the way just yet...
Nasa TV notes that today has an instantaneous launch time. That means that there is no room for any kind of flexibility, or waiting for weather to pass. If they don't use the scheduled time, in 27 minutes, then they'll have to wait for the weekend.
We'll get a weather update in a few minutes, which will give an indication of whether conditions have cleared enough to allow the countdown to go ahead.
It's just a waiting game for now. We'll get a weather update in about two minutes and we should know.
But the tone on the official feed is getting more damp: they're talking more and more about the importance of abiding by the weather and the safety issues that not doing so would present.
The important thing about the weather isn't only the conditions in Florida. It also requires good weather across the Atlantic, because if the astronauts were have to abort their mission they would need to be sure the sea would be safe for them to drop into.
It's sounding like the launch is scrubbed. SpaceX says it needs "another ten minutes" – ie, ten minutes after the launch time – which it doesn't have.
The countdown is still going, and we're waiting for the final announcement.
But it's not sounding good.
Launch is scrubbed. There'll be no liftoff today.
The weather got in the way.
They'll try again on Saturday.
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