CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Wednesday, for the first time in nine years, American astronauts were scheduled to head to space in an American made spacecraft. Unfortunately, the SpaceX launch was delayed because of weather.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon Spacecraft is the first privately contracted spaceship ever used by NASA to send astronauts to space.
The ship was made by the Elon Musk-owned company SpaceX. The company's Falcon 9 rockets are tested in Texas. In fact, they often make the trip through East Texas on their way to Cape Canaveral.
“I'm standing right here along Highway 79 in Jacksonville, and almost every one of these rockets travels by ground right past here on its way to the capes," space enthusiast and AP contributor Scott Lieberman said. "And so this is in some ways, still a local event. You know, these are our engineers putting this together that are Texas trained.”
Lieberman is an East Texan and experienced space travel enthusiast famous for his picture of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
He says this mission is historic.
“It's been nine years since we've had an American launched on an American rocket, and this will be the first time that this is a rocket from a private enterprise," Lieberman said. "This is a private contract to build this rocket to meet specifications for NASA, but was basically built by people private industry."
Takeoff is not the only part of this mission looking to set a first precedent. NASA and SpaceX hope this mission will help them make crucial steps towards more moon landings, and eventually a Mars mission.
“Actually, within this decade, NASA is wanting to privatize sending people back to the moon with their Artemis program," Tyler Junior College Earth & Space Science Director Beau Hartweg said. "And so this is first step to show that that can potentially be successfully done. And then after that on to Mars.”
Wednesday's cancellation is the latest of several manned missions canceled due to weather. Lieberman says there are quite a few things that had to line up to make a successful launch.
“The weather has to be acceptable in about 50 locations," Lieberman explained. "Literally 50 between here and Ireland to recover in case of an emergency."
Officials have rescheduled the launch for Saturday at 2:22 p.m. Central Time.