Helium leak scrubs SpaceX launch to space station

A helium leak has grounded SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which had been scheduled to lift off Monday for a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

SpaceX called off the planned launch of a commercial cargo ship bound for the International Space Station for NASA Monday (April 14) due to a helium leak on the company's Falcon 9 rocket that will keep the mission stuck on Earth until at least Friday (April 18).

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition

The private spaceflight company's unmannedDragon spacecraftwas counting down toward a liftoff at 4:58 p.m. EDT (2058 GMT) from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. But the attempt was scrubbed about an hour before launch due to the helium leak.

"Todays launch has been scrubbed due to a helium leak on Falcon 9's first stage," SpaceX officials announced in an update today. "A fix will be implemented by the next launch opportunity on Friday April 18, though weather on that date isn't ideal." [See photos of SpaceX's 3rd Dragon mission to the space station]

Today's scrub follows two earlier delays that have already pushed the next Dragon launch by more than a month.

SpaceX initially hoped to launch the mission on March 13, but the company delayed it by about two weeks to tie up a few loose ends. The launch was pushed back again, to mid-April, when a fire damaged a ground-based radar system used to track liftoffs from Cape Canaveral.

The upcoming mission will be thethird of 12 Dragon delivery missionsto the space station by California-based SpaceX under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. SpaceX launched its first cargo run to the station in 2012. Another company, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., has a $1.9 billion contract for eight cargo missions the first of which launched in January using its own Antares rockets and Cygnus spacecraft.

The weather forecast on Friday predicts only a 40 percent chance of good launch conditions, but SpaceX officials plan to complete helium leak repairs in time to make a second launch attempt this week.

See original here:
Helium leak scrubs SpaceX launch to space station