You are looking live at a Falcon 9 rocket
on the launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station in Florida.
AT 6:24 this evening, the aerospace company
SpaceX will launch a Dragon cargo spacecraft
on a NASA mission to resupply the International
Space Station.
Good evening and welcome everyone to NASA’s
Kennedy Space Center for our live coverage
of the launch of the 18th resupply mission
for SpaceX.
I’m your host, Jennifer Wolfinger.
We are about 23 minutes away from the planned
liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket from the coast
of Florida.
The mission?
To fly much-needed astronaut supplies and
research experiments up to the International
Space Station.
And we have a team of correspondents across
the country helping us cover all the angles
of this launch.
We will head to the Mission Director’s Center
here on the Space Coast to get updates on
the weather and the countdown, and we’ll
head west to SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne,
California, and check in at Mission Control
Houston at Johnson Space Center.
We also have a correspondent standing by with
some of the agency’s top science experts.
But first, here are some quick facts about
today’s launch.
SpaceX transported the Falcon 9 rocket out
to the launch pad and lifted it to vertical
launch position for the 18th cargo resupply
mission to the International Space Station.
The plan is to keep the Dragon spacecraft
docked to station for about four weeks before
bringing it back to Earth.
This is the third flight for this Dragon spacecraft
and the second time this Falcon booster has
been flown.
Dragon will deliver more than 5,000 pounds
of astronaut supplies and payloads for science
research to the orbiting laboratory.
Now let’s bring in NASA’s Derrol Nail,
who is in the Mission Director’s Center,
just a few miles away from the launch pad.
