Launch of first civilian commercial crew to space station slips to Friday

Launch of a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the first all-civilian crew on a commercial, non-government flight to the International Space Station is slipping from Wednesday to at least Friday, the mission’s sponsor announced Sunday. No reason for the slip was given.

Houston-based Axiom Space said launch from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center is now targeted for no earlier than 11:17 a.m. ET Friday, April 8, setting up a docking at the space station Saturday morning around 7:30 a.m.

Mission commander Michael Lopez-Alegria, an Axiom vice president and former NASA astronaut, and three wealthy investor/entrepreneurs — Larry Connor, Canadian Mark Pathy and Israeli Eytan Stibbe, a former F-16 fighter ace — plan to spend about nine days aboard the lab carrying out privately funded research before undocking and returning to Earth.

The flight is the first NASA-sanctioned «private astronaut mission» to the space station as the agency attempts to expand commercial investment in low-Earth orbit research and development.

William Harwood

Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. He covered 129 space shuttle missions, every interplanetary flight since Voyager 2’s flyby of Neptune and scores of commercial and military launches. Based at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Harwood is a devoted amateur astronomer and co-author of «Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia.»