SpaceX Falcon 9 launch, scheduled for Sunday was delayed by one day.
SpaceX delayed the scheduled launch of its 229-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket, the company said in an official statement.
The Falcon 9 rocket had been scheduled to launch from Complex 40 launch pad, at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 8:29 p.m. ET Sunday, but the company announced at 4 p.m. that it would aim for a launch at 8:33 p.m. Monday as they need time “for more analysis”.
An earlier attempt at launching the Falcon 9 on June 28th resulted in an explosion and the rocket broke apart less than two-and-a-half minutes after the liftoff. The crash destroyed the company’s unmanned Dragon cargo ship bound for the International Space Station.
Sunday afternoon, only several hours before the initially planned launch of Falcon 9, SpaceX’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk announced on Twitter that the rocket would have “a 10 percent higher chance of a good landing” on Monday.
SpaceX has tried several times to land the rocket on a floating ocean platform, but those attempts have failed and the company says each try has taught them more about how to succeed in the future.
The California-based company will attempt to land the first stage of its rocket in an upright position on solid ground for the first time, which is a milestone in making rockets reusable. The Falcon 9 is aimed to deliver 11 satellites to low-Earth orbit for ORBCOMM, a New Jersey-based communications company.