The California-based company SpaceX yesterday scrubbed the highly anticipated launch of its Dragon capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) due to a rocket engine problem.
The last-second abort came when one of the Falcon 9’s engines exceeded a technical limit that forced a shutdown of the launch attempt, which might be rescheduled for as early as Tuesday.
“Launch aborted: slightly high combustion chamber pressure on engine 5. Will adjust limits for countdown in a few days,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk wrote on the microblogging site Twitter.
Photo: AFP
A SpaceX spokesman said engineers would look into the causes, but that the issue was not believed to be something entirely new.
“We detected something was wrong with one of the limits” on one of the rocket’s nine engines, the spokesman said on SpaceX’s live broadcast of the event.
The next opportunity for launch is at 3:44am on Tuesday, according to NASA. A press briefing to detail the causes of the delay was set for 6:30am.
The launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the unmanned Dragon and more than half a tonne of cargo toward the orbiting lab, will mark the first attempt to send a privately built spacecraft to the research outpost, where it plans to do a fly--under, followed by a berthing.
SpaceX is the first of several US competitors to try sending its own cargo-bearing spacecraft to the ISS with the goal of restoring US access to space for human travelers by 2015.
The company made history with its Dragon launch in December 2010, becoming the first commercial outfit to send a spacecraft into orbit and back.
Until now, only the space agencies of Russia, Japan and Europe have been able to send supply ships to the ISS.
The US had that capacity too, with its iconic space shuttle that long served as part astronaut bus, part delivery truck for the lab. However, the 30-year shuttle program ended for good last year, leaving Russia as the sole taxi for astronauts to the ISS until private industry comes up with a replacement.
SpaceX has benefited from NASA dollars in its quest, but has also poured its own money into the endeavor.
SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation both have billion--dollar contracts with NASA to supply cargo to the ISS in the coming years, and they get NASA funds in exchange for meeting key milestones in their projects.
NASA has given SpaceX about US$390 million so far of the total US$680 million SpaceX has spent on cargo development, Shotwell said.
SpaceX also gets funding from NASA on a separate effort to develop a commercial crew vehicle for carrying astronauts to space, along with competitors Blue Origin, Boeing and Sierra Nevada.
In a few years’ time, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said she hoped SpaceX would be able to undercut the hefty price NASA pays Russia for US astronauts to get a seat aboard the Soyuz space capsule — about US$63 million a ticket.
With seven seats aboard the Dragon capsule, she said SpaceX could someday offer that to NASA for US$140 million per mission — about US$20 million per seat.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS