PNS|New Delhi
SpaceX, NASA and Axiom Space are closely watching weather patterns at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida where Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla and three others look forward to their travel to the International Space Station (ISS), now scheduled for Wednesday.
Addressing a pre-launch press conference, SpaceX Vice President William Gerstenmaier said engineers had fixed some snags in the Falcon-9 rocket that were discovered during the static fire test and had gone unnoticed during the post-flight refurbishment of boosters.
The Axiom-4 commercial mission to the ISS had to be put off by a day to Wednesday evening due to inclement weather conditions in the flight path of the SpaceX rocket that would lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.
Gerstenmaier said engineers had discovered a locks leak that was previously seen on the booster during its entry on the last mission and was not fully repaired during the refurbishment.
“We are continuing to troubleshoot that. We should get that completed today and we will have that back in configuration. We are installing a purge that will essentially mitigate the leak if it still continues… on the launch day,” he said.
Gerstenmaier said engineers also discovered an engine 5 thrust vector control problem and the components associated with that have already been changed.
“We will be complete with all our work this (Tuesday) evening and we will be ready to support launch as early as Wednesday,” he said.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman V Narayanan said on Monday that due to weather conditions, the launch of the Axiom-4 mission for sending Indian Gaganyatri to the ISS was postponed from June 10 to June 11.
“The targeted time of launch is 5:30 PM IST on 11th June 2025,” Narayanan said in a post on X on Monday.
Jimmy Tager, the Launch Weather Officer, 45th Weather Squadron of the US Space Force, said there was surface high pressure to the south east of central Florida, which typically produces south west flow across the area.
“Now over the next couple of days, the surface high pressure is going to move further towards the north and that is going to switch our primary flow towards the south east. South east flow does tend to create some more isolated scattered showers to thundershowers in the morning time,” he said.
He added that even though the Probability of Violation (POV) was lower for the initial attempt (June 10), for the next attempt on Wednesday, the POV does increase to 20 per cent.
