Elon Musk's SpaceX Now Expects To Launch Crew-3 On Wednesday After 2nd Delay

Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk-led SpaceX said on Saturday its Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station has been delayed again.

What Happened: SpaceX and the U.S. space agency NASA are now targeting the launch of the Crew-3 mission from the latter’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to take place on Wednesday. 

SpaceX and NASA are looking at a 09:03 p.m. ET launch window with a backup opportunity on Thursday at 8:40 p.m. ET.

SpaceX said the weather conditions for the Wednesday launch are 80% favorable. 

Following Crew-2’s return to Earth, Falcon 9 will launch Dragon’s third long-duration crew mission to the @Space_Station as soon as Wednesday, November 10; weather forecast is 80% favorable for liftoff pic.twitter.com/xOFGVw3fOP

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 7, 2021

Crew-3 is SpaceX’s third operational crewed flight for NASA — and the fifth human spaceflight mission SpaceX has launched since May 2020— which uses the flight to transport astronauts to and from the ISS. 

The Crew-3 mission would ferry NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer to the space station.

The mission was first scheduled to take place on Oct. 31 but has since been delayed twice.  NASA now aims to return the astronauts from Crew-2 before Crew-3 is launched.

See Also: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Loses Lawsuit Against NASA Over SpaceX Lunar Lander

Why It Matters: SpaceX has been working with NASA on multiple projects including a $2.9 billion lunar landing contract. Just last week, Amazon.com Inc AMZN founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin lost the lucrative lawsuit against NASA for awarding the contract to SpaceX.

Musk dreams of colonizing Mars and has in the past said he remains “highly confident” that SpaceX would land humans on Mars by 2026.

SpaceX and Blue Origin also compete with each other in the recently launched space tourism flights. 

Price Action: Tesla shares closed 0.64% lower at $1,222.09 a share on Friday.

Photo: Courtesy of NASA