SpaceX’s next astronaut mission has been delayed by a severe storm.
The company had planned to launch the Crew-9 mission for NASA on Thursday afternoon (September 26) from the Space Force Station Cape Canaveral in Florida to the International Space Station (ISS).
However, that date has been pushed back by at least two days due to a hurricane named Helene. Helene is currently a tropical storm, but is expected to make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane on Thursday. As a result, NASA and SpaceX now intend to launch Crew-9 no earlier than Saturday (Sept. 28). Liftoff on that day would be at 1:17 p.m. EDT (5:17 p.m. GMT).
“Although Tropical Storm Helene is moving through the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to impact the Florida Panhandle, the storm system is large enough that strong winds and heavy rainfall are expected in the Cape Canaveral and Merritt Island regions of Florida’s east coast,” NASA officials said in an update this afternoon (Sept. 24).
Crew-9’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule, named Freedom, were rolled to the launch pad today. Mission team members will conduct dry runs with the hardware this evening and then “roll the rocket-capsule combination back to the hangar ahead of possible storm activity,” NASA officials wrote.
Crew-9 will send NASA’s Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov to the ISS. They will live on the station for about five months and return home in February 2025.
Crew Dragon capsules normally carry four people to the orbiting laboratory, but NASA is keeping two seats on Freedom free for astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who need a flight back to Earth.
Williams and Wilmore arrived at the ISS in June on the first crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule. That mission was only supposed to last about 10 days, but after Starliner experienced engine problems in orbit, NASA extended the capsule’s stay on the ISS while it investigated the problem. The agency ultimately decided to bring Starliner home uncrewed, which happened without incident on September 7. Williams and Wilmore will remain aboard the ISS; if all goes according to plan, they will spend about eight months in orbit.
Related: Meet the SpaceX Crew-9 astronauts launching to the International Space Station on September 26
As the name suggests, Crew-9 will be the ninth operational astronaut mission SpaceX has launched to the ISS for NASA. Elon Musk’s company also has six other crewed flights under its belt – a test mission to the station for NASA in 2020, three private flights to the ISS, and two commercial solo orbits of the Earth.
Like SpaceX, Boeing has a contract with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, but given the problems Starliner experienced during its recent test flight, it’s unclear when the aerospace giant will conduct its first long-duration crewed flight to the ISS.
