NASA moves SpaceX launch to Sunday because of poor weather offshore

Now that NASA has deemed that mission a success, from launch to docking to splashdown, SpaceX is moving ahead with what it hopes will be regular flights to the space station carrying full contingents of astronauts for extended stays. The first of those "operational" flights, as NASA calls them, is scheduled for this weekend, with four space travelers - three from the United States and one from Japan - aboard. But there is nothing routine about it.

That was made clear Friday, when the mission's planned Saturday launch was thrown into doubt after Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, tweeted that he had twice tested positive for the coronavirus, but also had tested negative the same day. He said he had been feeling unwell the past few days: "Mild sniffles & cough & slight fever past few days. Right now, no symptoms, although I did take NyQuil."

But the news left SpaceX and NASA scrambling to determine whether Musk had come in contact with anyone who might have had access to the astronauts. On Friday afternoon, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told The Washington Post that contact tracing showed that "no mission essential personnel has been in touch with Elon Musk," news Bridenstine called "very, very positive."

"So there should be no impact on the mission," he added. "I think we're in good shape, and we're looking forward to a good launch."

Hours later, however, the launch was moved to Sunday after weather forecasters determined that conditions offshore were likely to be too rough to allow the recovery of the vehicle's booster. This booster is particularly important because SpaceX intends to use it for its next flight with astronauts, the Crew-2 mission, now scheduled for the spring of 2021. That would mark the first time NASA allowed a flight of crew to launch on a booster that had flown previously.

The launch is now scheduled for 7:27 p.m. EST Sunday.

Flying humans to space is a risky and difficult endeavor that, as SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has said, requires "a million things to go right" for a successful launch, "and only one thing has to go wrong to have a particularly bad day."

Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Benji Reed, SpaceX's director of crew mission management, said that every time he comes to the Kennedy Space Center he visits a grove of trees planted to commemorate the lives lost when the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. The trees remind him of the responsibility the company has.

"We hold the lives of people in our hands as we transport them into space," he said. The Crew Dragon stays attached to the station "to be a lifeboat if they need it, and then we bring them home to their families. And that is really important. We ask our teams to read the accident reports of the previous accidents that have happened to take those lessons to heart as well."

Rockets and spacecraft are complex machines, operating under extraordinary circumstances - propellants that are extremely cold, ignited to generate a massive amount of thrust - and filled with thousands of parts that need to work perfectly.

To get to this point, SpaceX has had to overcome a series of failures. Its Falcon 9 rocket has exploded twice - once in 2015 during a cargo resupply mission to the space station, then in 2016 while being fueled ahead of an engine test fire. Then last year, its Dragon capsule exploded during a test of its abort engines.

"We're transitioning from a test flight to operational flights," Bridenstine said Sunday during a ceremony to welcome the astronauts to the Kennedy Space Center. "Make no mistake, every flight is a test flight when it comes to space travel. But it's also true that we need to routinely be able to go to the International Space Station."

SpaceX got another reminder of how tricky rockets can be when during a launch for the U.S. Space Force last month the rocket's sensors noticed a problem and autonomously aborted the flight with just two seconds to go on the countdown clock.

SpaceX later discovered the problem was that a little bit of lacquer, used to prevent corrosion before being cleaned off, was getting stuck in tiny vent holes in some of its engine valves. During a news conference last month, Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability, said that if the rocket had fired, it would have been what's called a "hard start," which he said was "not necessarily bad. In most cases, it rattles the engine and it may cause a little bit of damage on the engines. In extreme cases, it may cause more damage to the engines. In general, you do not want that. You want a good start-up."

He said that the rocket was safe "the whole time" because it was "held down on the ground" while the rocket's computers shut down the operation before it could launch.

Still, SpaceX swapped out two of the engines on the Falcon 9 rocket that will be used to fly this weekend's Crew-1 mission and ran another series of tests to ensure they were working properly.

After the test flight, SpaceX also noticed a little more erosion than expected on the capsule's heat shield, which protects the astronauts as they fly back to Earth through the atmosphere. SpaceX decided to reinforce those areas, and NASA has since approved the changes.

Those technical challenges serve as additional reminders of how a rocket as tall as a 23-story building could be tripped up by small components, some no bigger than an insect.

"No question, rocketry is tough and requires a lot of attention to detail," Koenigsmann said. "Rockets are humbling. Every day I work with them, it's always a challenge, and it's always difficult. And you just have to be super diligent and on your toes to get this right."

The problem with the engine and the heat shield posed no danger to the astronauts, officials have said repeatedly. And NASA this week said that after years of work it had certified SpaceX to fly crews to space, the first time a commercial company has held that responsibility.

The message from NASA to SpaceX is: "You can safely fly our crew members to and from the International Space Station," said Kathy Lueders, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations mission directorate. "You've shown us the data, and we trust you to do that. There's a big trust factor here. This is a big step for us."

But human spaceflight is still a risky endeavor, with all sorts of hurdles that need to be cleared before flying to the space station is even close to being routine.

Unlike the space shuttle, which had no abort capability, the Crew Dragon is equipped with emergency escape engines that can pull the capsule away from the rocket in case anything goes wrong. The spacecraft would then land somewhere in the Atlantic, and rescue crews from the Defense Department and ManTech, a defense contractor, will be standing by up and down the East Coast to recover the crew.

The chances of an abort are low. "But we have to plan for the worst case," said Mike McClure, a ManTech program manager who used to command the Air Force's rescue detachment. "And the worst case that we are preparing for is if the spacecraft has to come down and splashes down in the deep open."

Amid the pandemic, the crew, NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins, Shannon Walker and Victor Glover, as well as Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, and their families have been in lockdown for weeks. And NASA said it has taken extra precaution to ensure they are not exposed.

"It's not only to protect us," Hopkins said during a news conference Monday. "But also to protect the entire team - the trainers, the people that are building the vehicles, the people that are sitting in the control rooms, all of that. It has taken a special effort to protect everybody."