(NEXSTAR) – A crewed mission on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft was postponed due to “an unfavorable weather forecast,” according to NASA.
The launch was originally scheduled for 12:09 p.m. ET on Thursday. It has instead been rescheduled for Friday at 11:43 a.m. ET.
“Standing down from today’s Falcon 9 launch of Dragon due to cloud cover at the launch site,” a representative for SpaceX explained on X.
The crew of the mission — Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke of NASA, Kimiya Yui of Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency, and Oleg Platonov of Russia’s Roscosmos space program — are planning to arrive at the International Space Station this week to further study and experiment with methods to maintain the health of astronauts on future missions, including a possible expedition to Mars, according to NASA.
“Other science Crew-11 members will conduct on the space station include studying stem cell production methods to develop advanced cures, new ways to treat bacterial infections, and space agriculture techniques,” NASA says.
On Thursday morning, the crew readied for their mission with a “long-held spaceflight tradition,” according to NASA: a card game.
“The astronauts are not anything if they’re not superstitious, so this is one of those traditions,” a representative for NASA says in a video of this morning’s card game.
“The game changes every mission, it’s really up to the chief of the office to figure out what that game is going to be. But the goal is the same: You go until the commander wins, and you have shaken off all of the bad luck, if you will.”
