Poor weather forces NASA to push Crew-12 launch

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — On Monday morning, NASA announced that Crew-12 mission managers made the decision to delay the launch to Thursday, due to unfavorable weather conditions.

Originally, NASA’s commercial crew mission to the International Space Station was going to be on Wednesday at 6:01 a.m. ET.

However, poor weather forced NASA to change its plans.

“When we had our briefing this morning, the launch site weather is very favorable for the entire week here at the Kennedy Space Center, but we have abort weather up the east coast where should something happen to the launch vehicle, we can separate dragon and land safely, we could see high winds along that track,” says Steve Stich, NASA Commercial Crew Program manager, on Monday during a press conference.

NASA pushed the launch ahead one day to 5:38 a.m. ET, Thursday, Feb. 12, as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon are waiting at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 for launch.

The NASA team is meeting on Tuesday morning for a weather briefing to determine if the Thursday opportunity holds or if it will be pushed to Friday.

The four-member crew is NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedvaev.

Meir and Fedvaev have flown to the space station once before.

“They are returning residents, then we have two new flyers Jack Hathaway and Sophie Adenot. We are looking forward to having them on board as well,” says Dana Weigel, NASA International Space Station Program manager.

Crew-12 was moved up due to an undisclosed illness of one of the Crew-11 astronauts, who safely returned to Earth back in January.

“I wanted to thank the whole team for the early Crew-11 return, and this particular launch. Everyone’s done a great job,” Weigel says.

Because of the medical episode, Crew-11’s mission was cut short. It was originally going to end in February.

A big part of Crew-12’s mission is scientific investigations and technology demonstrations, prepping humans for future deep space missions to the moon and Mars and beyond.