SpaceX Suddenly Aborts Falcon 9 Rocket Launch From Landing Zone 4 in Vandenberg Air Force Base

SpaceX postponed Thursday's Starlink launch to Friday due to fog from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base. The latest launch was supposed to surpass its previous 31 flights in 2021 with a 32nd launch this year.

According to UPI, the countdown to the Falcon 9 rocket's scheduled launch of 46 Starlink satellites into low-Earth orbit was aborted seconds before the scheduled launch at SpaceX Landing Zone 4.

SpaceX Pushes Back Falcon 9 Rocket Launch to Friday

The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket launch was initially slated to take place at 1:39 p.m. EDT (10:39 a.m. local time) on Thursday but has since been moved to the same time on Friday.

In a tweet, SpaceX announced that the launch would proceed "despite the fog" but did not provide an explanation for the delay.

"There are a thousand ways a launch can go wrong, and only one way that it can go right," Kate Tice, manager of quality systems engineering at SpaceX, stated during the live launch commentary (per Space.com).

"Given that, we are overly cautious on the ground, and if the team or the vehicle sees anything that looks even slightly off, they will stop the countdown as we saw today," she explained.

According to Tice, the vehicle and payload are in good condition, and the crew attempted to recycle inside the timeframe. However, she noted that today's launch is not anticipated.

The feed showed a launchpad enveloped in the fog that concealed the rocket on a gloomy day at the company's California launch location while raindrops speckled the camera lens.

According to Space Flight Now, SpaceX's launch director announced the countdown. However, teams started planning to drain the two-stage Falcon 9 rocket's propellants after canceling the Thursday deployment.

The Elon Musk-founded business will surpass its record of 31 launches from Florida and California last year if it is successful on Friday. According to SpaceX, a backup possibility is available on Friday at the same time.

The first stage rocket for this flight, according to SpaceX (via Devdiscourse), has also launched NROL-87, NROL-85, and SARah-1. The first stage of Falcon 9 will return to Earth after stage separation and touch down on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship, which is placed in the Pacific Ocean.

Series of Countdown Disruptions

The most recent countdown interruption caused by a technical issue occurred in December 2020 during a launch from Florida for the National Reconnaissance Office, Space Flight Now said. SpaceX engineers discovered an unusual pressure reading in the liquid oxygen tank of the upper stage of the Falcon 9 during that launch attempt. They dropped the rocket horizontally for troubleshooting and successfully launched the mission two days later.

Since December 2020, SpaceX has canceled a number of Falcon 9 countdowns because of severe weather or range violations by vessels or aircraft that strayed into forbidden seas or airspace close to the launch site. Also, a few launches have been postponed due to issues with the Falcon 9 rocket or ground systems, although none of those happened during the final countdown before liftoff.

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