SpaceX scrubbed Monday's scheduled launch of a robotic Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station, due to a helium leak on the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage. <\/p>\n
Word of the postponement came a little more than an hour before the Falcon 9 was to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. <\/p>\n
NASA said that the next opportunity for launch would come at 3:25 p.m. ET Friday. <\/p>\n
Photographers focus on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket as it sits on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Monday. <\/p>\n
\"A fix will be implemented by the next launch opportunity ... though weather on that date isn't ideal,\" SpaceX said in a status update. <\/p>\n
Forecasters had put the chance of acceptable weather for launch at 80 percent for Monday, but only 40 percent for Friday. <\/p>\n
SpaceX's Dragon capsule is packed with about 4,600 pounds (2,100 kilograms) of supplies and equipment for the station. This is the third of 12 round-trip resupply flights that SpaceX is conducting under the terms of a $1.6 billion contract with NASA. <\/p>\n
Billionaire's grand vision <\/p>\n
This particular mission is notable because it's the first time the Falcon 9 has been outfitted with a set of four landing legs. The 25-foot-long (7.6-meter-long) foldable legs are part of a long-term experiment to see whether the Falcon 9 rocket can be recovered and reused. <\/p>\n
This time around, the legs won't play a useful role. They're just part of a test to relight the rocket engines after stage separation and ease the first stage's fall into the Atlantic Ocean, so that it can be recovered intact by a SpaceX team. <\/p>\n
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Original post: SpaceX scrubbed Monday's scheduled launch of a robotic Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station, due to a helium leak on the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage. Word of the postponement came a little more than an hour before the Falcon 9 was to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida Continue reading
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