A MANNED SpaceX flight has been delayed due to damage to the Falcon 9 rocket that is set to bring four crew members to the International Space Station (ISS).
Nasa and SpaceX are working to get their fifth partnered flight off the ground by late September.
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The Crew-5 mission to the ISS will be pushed back from early September to September 29 due to damage to the Falcon 9 rocket.
The rocket was damaged during transportation from SpaceX’s production site in Southern California to the testing facility in Texas, Nasa explained in a blog unpacking the delay.
The damage was sustained by the rocket’s interstage, the black cylinder on the side of the Falcon 9 that connects the first and second stages.
“A launch at the end of September will allow SpaceX to complete hardware processing and mission teams will continue to review the launch date based on the space station’s visiting spacecraft schedule,” Nasa’s blog continued.
The Falcon 9 interstage is made of an “aluminum honeycomb core” and wrapped in carbon fiber according to SpaceX’s publicly available user guide for the Falcon 9.
The interstage houses the separation system that enables the reusable booster to detach.
In 2008, SpaceX was on the brink of failure when their third launch attempt failed because the second stage’s engine ignited while still inside the interstage, Musk explained to biographer Ashlee Vance in vivid detail.
The company has ultimately nailed down exactly how to go off-world and broke its own record for most launches in a year last week.
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But SpaceX damaged their fourth rocket, their first to reach orbit, in a blunder detailed by Vance.
Musk had elected to fly the rocket to the launch site on an island in the Pacific via a military plane instead of ferrying it by boat.
Because the rocket was sealed so tight, the pressurized cabin of the airplane started to force the rocket to cave in.
Engineers told the pilot to gain altitude and unscrewed a few bits and alleviate the pressure.
Nasa and SpaceX signed a multi-launch contract in 2014 and the public-private partnership has sent four missions to the ISS, including a four-person team currently in the orbiting lab.
Nasa recently bought five more crewed trips on SpaceX rockets for $3.5billion dollars.
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