Hello and good morning from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft stand ready for liftoff at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Launch is targeted for 3:11 a.m. EDT today, with an instantaneous launch window.
Meteorologists with the U.S. Air Force 45th Space Wing predict a 70% chance of favorable weather for liftoff. The primary weather concerns for launch are thick clouds and ground winds.
Launch coverage continues, followed at 4:30 a.m. by a postlaunch news conference with representatives from NASA’s International Space Station Program and SpaceX. The launch and postlaunch news conference will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
The spacecraft will take two days to reach the space station before installation on Sunday, May 5. When it arrives, astronaut David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency will grapple Dragon, with NASA astronaut Nick Hague serving as backup. NASA astronaut Christina Koch will assist by monitoring telemetry during Dragon’s approach. After Dragon capture, mission control in Houston will send commands to the station’s arm to rotate and install the spacecraft on the bottom of the station’s Harmony module.