SpaceX Postpones Launch to Space Station Until Friday

SpaceX scrubbed Monday's scheduled launch of a robotic Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station, due to a helium leak on the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage.

Word of the postponement came a little more than an hour before the Falcon 9 was to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

NASA said that the next opportunity for launch would come at 3:25 p.m. ET Friday.

Photographers focus on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket as it sits on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday.

"A fix will be implemented by the next launch opportunity ... though weather on that date isn't ideal," SpaceX said in a status update.

Forecasters had put the chance of acceptable weather for launch at 80 percent for Monday, but only 40 percent for Friday.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule is packed with about 4,600 pounds (2,100 kilograms) of supplies and equipment for the station. This is the third of 12 round-trip resupply flights that SpaceX is conducting under the terms of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA.

Billionaire's grand vision

This particular mission is notable because it's the first time the Falcon 9 has been outfitted with a set of four landing legs. The 25-foot-long (7.6-meter-long) foldable legs are part of a long-term experiment to see whether the Falcon 9 rocket can be recovered and reused.

This time around, the legs won't play a useful role. They're just part of a test to relight the rocket engines after stage separation and ease the first stage's fall into the Atlantic Ocean, so that it can be recovered intact by a SpaceX team.

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SpaceX Postpones Launch to Space Station Until Friday