SpaceX and NASA are delaying the launch of a planned mission to the International Space Station to fix an oxidizer leak in the Dragon spacecraft's propulsion system, the US space agency said.
NASA and SpaceX are doing additional testing and didn't announce a new target launch date for the Crew-13 mission, which will be staffed by American, Canadian and Russian astronauts.
The Dragon spacecraft is SpaceX's primary vehicle for sending astronauts and cargo to orbit, and it is the only US alternative to get crew to the ISS. It became a bargaining chip in a spat between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump last summer.
ALSO READ: SpaceX Launches NASA's Dark Energy-Hunting Space Telescope
SpaceX launched a $4.3 billion NASA telescope designed to study dark matter and energy into space on Sunday — and Trump called into a post-launch press conference to praise the launch.
Trump also on Friday started the process of creating a “US space academy” to serve the US Space Force as well as civilian space flight through NASA.
Meanwhile, NASA's $4.3 billion telescope blasted into space on Sunday, kicking off a five- to 10-year mission to study some of the universe's most exotic phenomena.
Mounted atop SpaceX's powerful Falcon Heavy rocket, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifted off at 7:26 a.m. local time from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch set the spacecraft on a trajectory toward its final destination, an orbit roughly 1 million miles from Earth, where it could begin observing the sky as early as December.
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