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.
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SpaceX being positive: this is just yet another dress rehearsal for the actual thing.
The official forecast from the US Air Force 45th Weather Squadron shows poor conditions on Saturday, too.
There's a 40 per cent chance that the weather will stop the launch on Saturday, its forecast says. There's the same chance the weather will not be favourable on Sunday, too.
It will take about 40 minutes as SpaceX takes the propellant back out of the rocket and the astronauts can come back out of the capsule and back to their quarters to prepare for Saturday.
The propellant is still coming out of the rocket, and the astronauts are still stuck waiting at the top of it.
At the moment, it wouldn't be safe for anyone to be walking around the pad and helping the astronauts, given the rocket is half-prepared to launch.
"We basically scrubbed due to three rules we were violating," SpaceX is telling the astronauts. "All three would have been expected to clear ten minutes after" takeoff.
The nature of the "instantaneous" launch window meant that SpaceX didn't have those ten minutes, however, and so that's why it was scrubbed.
SpaceX keen to stress that today's problems were not in any way technical: there was no problem with the astronauts' kit, with the rocket, the capsule or anything else. So there's no reason to worry about Saturday's launch either, they suggest, apart from the weather.
Here's what you need to know about the new attempt on Saturday, if you want something to look forward to (or something to worry about):
SpaceX is explaining why they have to have an instantaneous window. Everything about the launch is scripted to the second: as soon as you reach the end of the countdown, you can't stop and wait. The liquid oxygen, for instance, will start to warm and then the performance will be affected.
Other launches – such as those to satellites – can wait, because they're a bit more flexible about where they're going. But the International Space Station flies around on its own schedule, and so necessarily the rocket only has a relatively slim window to set off in.
Things are looking a little nicer behind the rocket. But they're not looking nice:
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