NASA’s plans for this year’s first crewed spaceflight must be postponed until at least Friday because of emergency weather restrictions in the flight path. However, the delay opens the door for a national security mission to launch Thursday morning.
The SpaceX Crew-12 mission is currently scheduled to launch at 5:15 a.m. ET on Friday from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, pushing back a day from its scheduled launch earlier on Wednesday.
The Crew Dragon Freedom’s flight path requires good weather conditions to prevent aborts, and strong winds are expected along the eastern seaboard.
So NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenotte and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev will wait one more day in quarantine at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida before getting the chance to launch for a planned eight-month stay on the International Space Station.
The weather on U.S. coasts isn’t a concern for United Launch Alliance, which aims to launch its new Vulcan rocket on its first mission this year.
The rocket, which debuts in 2024, is on just its fourth flight and the Space Force’s second after being certified for national security missions last year.
The USSF-87 mission contains multiple payloads from the Space Force Space Systems Command. It aims to lift off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Canaveral during the Thursday morning window of 3:30 to 5:30 a.m.
Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron predicts a 90 percent chance the launch site will be in good condition.
One of the payloads is the Northrop Grumman-built Geostationary Space Situational Awareness Program spacecraft, which is designed to “rapidly detect, warn, characterize and attribute disturbances to space systems in a geostationary environment,” according to a profile on ULA’s website. The second spacecraft on board has multiple classified payloads.
The mission was awarded to ULA in 2021 and was originally scheduled to launch in 2023, but delays in Vulcan rocket development have resulted in a backlog of more than 20 national security missions assigned to ULA to replace its dwindling supply of Atlas V rockets and retired Delta IV Heavy rockets.
ULA planned to ramp up launches in 2025 but did not materialize, completing just six missions, including a separate Vulcan launch, while rival SpaceX launched 101 times in 2025 from its two Space Coast launch pads. Blue Origin has added several more New Glenn rockets.
SpaceX has completed all seven launches so far in 2026.
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