SpaceX launch today: Weather 90 percent 'go'
Note: Live SpaceX launch video and coverage available here
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SpaceX is fueling a 208-foot Falcon 9 rocket for a 10:21 a.m. blastoff from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The weather forecast remains excellent, with a 90 percent chance of conditions good enough for the Falcon 9 to launch an unmanned Dragon capsule packed with more than 4,300 pounds of cargo bound for the International Space Station.
The launch window is instantaneous, so any technical or weather problem late in the countdown would likely result in a scrub.
A backup launch opportunity is available Monday.
Both stages of the Falcon 9 are fueled by Rocket Propellant-1, a highly refined kerosene, and liquid oxygen.
The rocket booster on Friday successfully completed a short test-firing of its nine Merlin 1D engines, a key test that cleared the way for today's countdown.
The resupply mission is SpaceX's seventh of 15 planned under a NASA Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract.
Join floridatoday.com at 9 a.m. for a countdown chat including updates and streaming of NASA TV's launch coverage.
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Rivals to launch the first astronauts from the Space Coast to the International Space Station in the post-shuttle era, Boeing and SpaceX hope to help each other with Sunday's 10:21 a.m. launch of an unmanned resupply mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Tucked in the "trunk" of SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule is a Boeing-built ring that both companies' future crew spacecraft will need to dock at the orbiting research complex flying 250 miles overhead.
"You better take good care of that docking adapter, because we are both counting on it," Boeing's Chris Ferguson joked to his SpaceX counterpart, Hans Koenigsmann, during a press conference Saturday at Kennedy Space Center.
The forecast calls for a 90 percent chance of weather good enough to permit SpaceX's 208-foot Falcon 9 rocket to blast off during an instantaneous launch window.
The Dragon riding atop the rocket is packed with 4,300 pounds of supplies, science experiments and equipment, including the 1,150-pound International Docking Adapter, or IDA.
"This is actually pretty cool, because it does play right into our next Crew Dragon program," Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president for mission assurance, said of the docking adapter in a separate news briefing. "It's something that we bring up for our own future, and so we're really motivated to bring this up."
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NASA last year awarded Boeing and SpaceX last year multi-billion contracts to fly astronauts to the ISS by late 2017, more than six years after the space shuttle program's final mission in July 2011.
The schedule is considered aggressive, and NASA has warned delays are inevitable if Congress gives the Commercial Crew Program less than $1.2 billion next year, as House and Senate budgets now propose.
"We're still hopeful," said Lisa Colloredo, associate manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. "The best way for us to stay on track and meet our goal to have a capability by 2017 is going to obviously depend on the budget."
The docking adapter is the first of two expected to launch this year to help set the stage for commercial crew missions.
Their design is the result of an international collaboration that established a system not only for Boeing and SpaceX but any international vehicle, if it is equipped with newly standardized equipment.
Beyond the space station, the same system would enable different spacecraft to link up to each other, potentially enabling one to help another experiencing trouble.
"Our dream is to have one common docking system that all countries will use to give us commonality as we reach further and further into space," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's ISS program manager.
SpaceX is flying its seventh of 15 cargo missions to and from the ISS under a NASA resupply contract worth roughly $2 billion.
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The cargo also includes some food and spare parts that will help make up for a Russian resupply ship's failure in April, which followed a launch failure last fall by Orbital Sciences Corp. (now ATK Orbital), NASA's other U.S. commercial cargo partner.
Suffredini said the station has food to last into October, and through the end of the year if SpaceX's Dragon arrives as planned two days after liftoff.
After the launch, SpaceX will attempt another experimental landing of its Falcon 9 rocket booster on an unpiloted "drone ship" stationed hundreds of miles off the coast of Jacksonville.
The company hopes to recover and reuse the boosters to reduce the coast of launches.
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During two previous tests in January and April, the 14-story boosters hit the ship too hard and crashed. SpaceX has continued to tinker with its landing system involving four legs at the rocket's base, fins to help control its descent through the atmosphere and a series of three engine firings.
"It's hard to say what the odds are, if it's better than the last one or not," Koenigsmann said. "But, I feel a little better."
Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. Follow him on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.