Keeping an eye on threatening weather, SpaceX engineers readied a previously flown Falcon 9 rocket and a twice-flown Dragon cargo ship for launch Wednesday on a two-day flight to deliver 5,000 pounds of equipment, supplies and science gear to the International Space Station.
How to watch the SpaceX launch today
- What: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch and Dragon cargo ship
- Date: July 24, 2019
- Time: 6:24 p.m. ET – launch window opens
- Location: Kennedy Space Center – Cape Canaveral, Florida
- Live stream: Watch free online stream in player above
On board are more than two dozen new experiments, including an automated 3D cardiac tissue “printer,” rodent habitats, research by Goodyear that could lead to improved tires — and even a container of bright green Nickelodeon “slime” for educational outreach.
Also on board: refurbished spacesuit components and a 1,000-pound commercial crew ship docking mechanism to replace one lost in a 2015 Falcon 9 launch failure. This will be the California rocket company’s 18th resupply mission to the international space station.
After installation during a planned August spacewalk, international docking adapter No. 3 will provide a second U.S. port for visiting crew ships being built by Boeing and SpaceX that fly themselves all the way in for docking. Two other NASA ports are available for SpaceX, Northrop Grumman and Japanese cargo ships that rely on the station’s robot arm for capture and berthing.
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“We are very excited about getting IDA-3 on board,” said Jason August, IDA project manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “This is critical in our path to allowing our commercial partners to ferry crew members to and from the ISS.
“In addition, we’re going to have future cargo vehicles that dock to the ISS as well. So we need two docking ports, it’s critical, in order to meet all of our objectives and continue on our path to commercializing low-Earth orbit.”
Liftoff from pad 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was targeted for 6:24 p.m., the moment Earth’s rotation carried the booster into the plane of the space station’s orbit. SpaceX planned to attempt recovery of the Falcon 9’s first stage, which first flew in May, with a landing back at the Air Force station about eight minutes after launch.
But forecasters predicted a 70 percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms, thick clouds and electrically active anvil clouds with more of the same expected Thursday. If the mission does not get off by then, the flight could slip out to early August because of other upcoming station launches and the specifics of the lab’s orbit.
Assuming an on-time liftoff, the Dragon cargo ship, making its third flight to the space station, will carry out an automated rendezvous, approaching from below and pulling up to within about 30 feet of the lab complex Friday morning.
At that point, the Dragon will hold position while Nick Hague, operating the station’s robot arm, locks onto a grapple fixture. Flight controllers in Houston then will take over, operating the arm remotely to pull the cargo ship in for berthing at the Earth-facing port of the forward Harmony module.
