Weather 90% 'go' for Sunday SpaceX launch

James Dean | Florida Today

MELBOURNE, Fla. — Rivals to launch the first astronauts from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station in the post-shuttle era, Boeing and SpaceX hope to help each other with Sunday's 10:21 a.m. ET launch of an unmanned resupply mission.

Tucked in the "trunk" of SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule is a Boeing-built ring that both companies' future crew spacecraft will need to dock at the orbiting research complex flying 250 miles overhead.

"You better take good care of that docking adapter, because we are both counting on it," Boeing's Chris Ferguson joked to his SpaceX counterpart, Hans Koenigsmann, during a news conference Saturday at Kennedy Space Center.

The forecast calls for a 90% chance of weather good enough to permit SpaceX's 208-foot Falcon 9 rocket to blast off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during an instantaneous launch window.

The Dragon riding atop the rocket is packed with 4,300 pounds of supplies, science experiments and equipment, including the 1,150-pound International Docking Adapter.

"This is actually pretty cool, because it does play right into our next Crew Dragon program," Koenigsmann, SpaceX's vice president for mission assurance, said of the docking adapter in a separate news briefing. "It's something that we bring up for our own future, and so we're really motivated to bring this up."

NASA last year awarded Boeing and SpaceX multibillion-dollar contracts to fly astronauts to the ISS by late 2017, more than six years after the space shuttle program's final mission in July 2011.

The schedule is considered aggressive, and NASA has warned delays are inevitable if Congress gives the program less than $1.2 billion next year, as House and Senate budgets now propose.

"We're still hopeful," said Lisa Colloredo, associate manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. "The best way for us to stay on track and meet our goal to have a capability by 2017 is going to obviously depend on the budget."

The docking adapter is the first of two expected to launch this year to help set the stage for commercial crew missions.

Their design is the result of an international collaboration that established a system not only for Boeing and SpaceX but any international vehicle, if it is equipped with newly standardized equipment.

Beyond the space station, the same system would enable different spacecraft to link up to each other, potentially enabling one to help another experiencing trouble.

"Our dream is to have one common docking system that all countries will use to give us commonality as we reach further and further into space," said Mike Suffredini, NASA's ISS program manager.

SpaceX is flying its seventh of 15 cargo missions to and from the ISS under a NASA resupply contract worth roughly $2 billion.

The cargo also includes some food and spare parts that will help make up for a Russian resupply ship's failure in April, which followed a launch failure last fall by Orbital Sciences Corp. (now ATK Orbital), NASA's other U.S. commercial cargo partner.

Suffredini said the station has food to last into October, and through the end of the year if SpaceX's Dragon arrives as planned two days after liftoff.

After the launch, SpaceX will attempt another experimental landing of its Falcon 9 rocket booster on an unpiloted "drone ship" stationed hundreds of miles off the coast of Jacksonville.

The company hopes to recover and reuse the boosters to reduce the coast of launches.

During two previous tests in January and April, the 14-story boosters hit the ship too hard. SpaceX has continued to tinker with its landing system, involving four legs at the rocket's base, fins to help control its descent through the atmosphere and a series of three engine firings.

"It's hard to say what the odds are, if it's better than the last one or not," Koenigsmann said. "But, I feel a little better."