Additionally, at 5,300kg, this is the heaviest payload SpaceX has attempted to deliver to a geostationary orbit.
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Weather conditions were looking 80 percent favorable, according to the company’s site, while they were 60 percent favorable Wednesday, but SpaceX cautioned that it’s still monitoring both upper level and ground level winds.
The launch window opens at 6:46 p.m. Eastern time.
“Rocket and spacecraft remain healthy”, the company said in a message posted on Twitter as the delay was announced.
Nailing the landing is huge for SpaceX and space travel as a whole because Musk has previously said he believes reusing rockets – which cost as much as a commercial airplane – could reduce the cost of traveling to space by a factor of one hundred.
The launch was scrubbed in the final minutes before launch again on Thursday.
The launch is the second this year for SpaceX, after the January 17 launch of the Jason-3 ocean science satellite on an older Falcon 9 v1.
More oxidizer maximizes the chances of a successful launch, as well as a successful landing on the drone ship.
Whatever happens, let’s all take a second to appreciate the name of the ship Falcon 9 will or won’t fall apart on: Of Course I Still Love You.
Elon Musk and his team are determined to nail a landing at sea.
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SpaceX announcers said the Falcon 9 was not upright after reaching the 300-by-170 foot landing pad in choppy seas about 200 miles west of San Diego. That’s because there will be many occasions when a booster won’t have enough fuel left in its tanks to fly itself back to the mainland after an orbital launch. SpaceX has tried to land on a floating barge on numerous occasions but has been unable to stick the landing thus far.
