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martyb [soylentnews.org] writes:

It’s launch day for the historic Crew-1 mission to the space station [arstechnica.com]:

The weather forecast is up in the air, but if things work out, SpaceX's Crew-1 will fly to the ISS (International Space Station) today. The launch is scheduled for Sunday 2020-11-15 at 19:29 EST (Monday 2020-11-16 at 00:29 UTC).

There is no guarantee conditions will be great on Sunday at the launch site, Kennedy Space Center, nor downrange at "abort sites" across the Atlantic Ocean should Dragon need to jettison itself from the Falcon 9 rocket during an emergency. The forecast for Sunday [spaceforce.mil] calls for a 50-50 chance of getting the launch off during its instantaneous window—7:27pm ET (00:27 UTC Monday). If the launch attempt is scrubbed, a back-up opportunity is available Wednesday.

The crew has already awoken this morning and will receive a final weather briefing at 3:12pm local time today. The NASA webcast below will begin at about the same time. If conditions look decent enough, the crew will move to don suits immediately thereafter and make their formal walkout of the operations and checkout building at 4:05pm en route to the launch pad.

YouTube live-streams: SpaceX [youtube.com] and NASA [youtube.com].

[See our prior coverage: NASA and SpaceX to Launch to ISS: Sun. 2020-11-15 @ 19:29 EST (Mon. 2020-11-16 @ 00:29 UTC) [soylentnews.org].]

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