The launch of a Falcon 9 rocket and its 52 Starlink satellites will next try to take place on Wednesday from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
Falcon manufacturer Space Exploration Technologies said a Tuesday countdown had been scrubbed, and the next departure attempt will be at 4:10 p.m. Wednesday.
The 223-foot-tall rocket will lift off from Space Launch Complex-4 on South Base.
Tuesday’s countdown in California was called off because of the NASA human spaceflight mission planned for Florida on Wednesday.
“Falcon 9 and Dragon are looking good for tomorrow’s Crew-5 launch …” SpaceX officials said on Twitter.
That Crew-5 launch will take place at 9 a.m. PDT Wednesday, and the teams were keeping an eye on winds along the ascent corridor, according to SpaceX.
Starlink is one of three SpaceX launches planned for this week, with the other two occurring from Florida.
The company scrapped Monday’s launch opportunity to give the team more time to complete pre-launch chores.
When SpaceX set the time for Tuesday, officials warned the Vandenberg mission might be delayed if the Crew-5 launch remained on track for Wednesday.
A Tuesday launch from California would not give the team enough time to review data ahead of the flight with humans from Florida.
NASA officials said they prefer two days between missions to analyze the data.
When the West Coast launch was delayed to Tuesday and the East Coast mission remained on track for Wednesday, the NASA team would not have time to conduct the assessment before the scheduled Crew-5 launch. That led to the decision to postpone the California mission at least one more day.
SpaceX has launched eight other Starlink missions from the West Coast since September 2021 and now has more than 3,000 spacecraft in orbit for the constellation to provide internet service around the globe. Most of the Starlink spacecraft headed to space aboard Falcon rockets launched from Florida.
The webcast for the Vandenberg launch will begin five minutes before the planned launch time and can be found at www.spacex.com.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.