Why NASA Aborted Astronaut Launch, And Why SpaceX Didn't Wait For A Few More Minutes

We were all excited for the NASA SpaceX launch of Crew Dragon crew capsule last night. In many ways it would have been truly historic -- a rocket that¡¯s partially reusable, new cool spacesuits and the first launch in nine years of a US rocket carrying US astronauts from US soil.

And the possibility of Elon Musk realising his dream of having reusable rockets start ferrying humans back and forth to space was nerve-tingling.

Elon Musk/ AFP

However, sadly, due to poor weather conditions, NASA and SpaceX crew had to scrub the launch.

The mission abortion occurred just 16 min 53 sec before the scheduled 4.33 pm lift-off time. This was announced by launch director Mike Taylor.

What went wrong with the weather?

There was a tropical storm brewing on top of the launchpad which wasn¡¯t really lightning, but according to experts, would have caused one, had the rocket went pass through them.

The NASA official stated, "We did have to scrub because of [the] weather. To be more specific we were still in violation of one of the weather criteria: the strength of electric fields in the atmosphere. We needed a little bit more time if we were going to clear that launch weather constraint."

Why couldn¡¯t they just launch a few minutes later?

Sure, it makes sense to think NASA should have waited for 10-15 minutes more, to let the storm pass off and then launch the rocket. But here¡¯s the thing -- rockets aren¡¯t like aircrafts. Firstly, everything in the aircraft is carefully calculated. From the fuel to the trajectory to the final destination, everything.

The aircraft was going to attach to the ISS (International Space Station) which is not static in space. It is travelling at a speed of 7.66 km/s. Even our Earth isn¡¯t static, so all this had to be carefully calculated. An extension of a launch window of even a few minutes would require the rocket to stretch further and it wouldn¡¯t have had those resources.

NASA

Additionally, our space is also full of live and dead satellites orbiting our planet. The rocket had a carefully calculated path that avoids them.

Even if the Falcon 9 rocket would've taken off from the launchpad, fought through the dangerous cloud system, and somehow managed to reach atmospheric space, it could've hit space debris. So launching after even say 10 minutes would have been dangerous and impossible.

When will NASA SpaceX launch Crew Dragon next?

The rocket launch now has two backup timelines. According to SpaceX, the next window opens at 12:22 p.m. PT (3:22 p.m. ET) on Saturday, May 30, and a subsequent window at 12 p.m. PT (3 p.m. ET) on Sunday, May 31.

The weather again seems to be dicey as weather reports in the location are hinting only a 40% chance of favourable weather for both backup launch times.