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SpaceX Launch Postponed

Posted by samzenpus on from the second-time's-a-charm dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news about SpaceX's launch today and second attempt to land its Falcon 9 rocket on a platform floating offshore in the Atlantic ocean. "You can watch live as SpaceX launches its Falcon 9 rocket and attempts to recover the first stage portion via an automated, barge-based landing plan in the Atlantic ocean, with the first take-off attempted scheduled for 4:33 PM ET, provided conditions remain good and pre-flight checks go well. A big part of this mission, designated CRS-6 and designed primarily as a resupply flight for the International Space Station, is getting a second chance at recovering Falcon 9's first stage rocket. Once the second stage and the Dragon spacecraft detach from that first stage rocket, it'll undergo a controlled descent as it attempts to touch down with SpaceX's ocean-borne landing platform." Update: 04/13 21:43 GMT by S : The launch was scrubbed because of lightning in a nearby cloud. It's been rescheduled for tomorrow at 4:10PM ET.

2 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Launch has been scrubbed by ZeroSerenity · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Way to jump the gun there.

    --
    For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
  2. Re:Why a one-second launch window? by DerekLyons · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You're remembering wrong. Most ISS launches have windows a few seconds wide, at most. There's a lot of stuff in LEO, all moving very fast, If you want a course that will hit the ISS at exactly the right speed, and not come too close to anything else, you've got a narrow window to do it in.

    You're explaining wrong. It has nothing to do with "other stuff" in LEO, and everything to do with the ISS's high inclination orbit. The plane of the orbit only passes over Cape Canaveral at intervals, and if you miss that window it will take excessive energy to match planes with the ISS.
     

    You *can* launch outside that window (space is a big place), but it eats into your fuel and safety margins and usually there's no reason to do that.

    Um, no. The width of the window is determined by the performance (available energy) of the booster and payload - you can't launch outside of it at all and reach the target. That's why windows exist in the first place.