We’ll should wait at the least yet another day to see SpaceX’s powerful Falcon Heavy rocket take to the skies again.
The brawny Falcon Heavy had been scheduled to launch the U.S. Space Force’s robotic X-37B space plane from Florida on Monday night (Dec. 11), a liftoff often called USSF-52. But about half-hour before the planned 8:24 p.m. EST (0124 GMT) liftoff time, SpaceX announced a scrub.
“Standing down from tonight’s Falcon Heavy launch on account of a ground side issue; vehicle and payload remain healthy. Team is resetting for the following launch opportunity of the U.S.-52 mission, which isn’t any sooner than tomorrow night,” SpaceX wrote via X (formerly often called Twitter).
Every time USSF-52 lifts off, you may watch it here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX.
Related: The Space Force’s secretive X-37B space plane: 10 surprising facts
USSF-52 might be the seventh launch for the reusable, 29-foot-long (8.8 meters) X-37B, which military officials say is primarily a testbed for brand new instruments and other technologies. Most payloads and other details about X-37B missions are classified.
The primary five X-37B missions launched atop United Launch Alliance Atlas V rockets. Essentially the most recent one, which landed in November 2022 after 908 days in orbit, lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9.
USSF-52 might be the primary X-37B mission to ride atop a Falcon Heavy, which may take the space plane higher than it has ever gone before. And that will indeed occur; the goals of the approaching mission “include operating in latest orbital regimes, experimenting with space domain awareness technologies and investigating the radiation effects to NASA materials,” Space Force officials wrote in a release last month.
That NASA radiation experiment will expose plant seeds to the tough environment of space, the discharge added.
The Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018, on a highly anticipated test flight that sent SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk’s red Tesla Roadster into orbit across the sun.
The heavy lifter has flown eight times to this point, including 4 times this yr already. The rocket last flew in October of this yr, when it launched NASA’s Psyche asteroid probe.
The X-37B Falcon Heavy launch was originally presupposed to occur on Sunday (Dec. 10), but SpaceX pushed the liftoff back a day on account of weather concerns.