Not Just Weather, Even Rocket Issues May Delay Shubhanshu Shukla's Space Foray

NDTV

a day ago

All eyes will be on the sky tomorrow as the rocket carrying Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, and a billion Indian hopes, lifts off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday. Group Captain Shukla will be only the second Indian in space - after Rakesh Sharma more than three decades ago - and the excitement is palpable, but it has already been dampened slightly because the mission has been postponed four times.
Top experts working on the Axiom-4 mission, which is a landmark NASA-ISRO collaboration and is being led by the private company Axiom Space, have now hinted that there could be further delays because the weather could play spoilsport and, more importantly, some issues are still being fixed in the Space X Falcon-9 rocket which is being used for the launch.
Addressing the Mission Readiness Review Conference in the early hours of Tuesday (India time), in which the fourth postponement to Wednesday at 5.30 pm IST (8am ET) was announced, Axiom Space, SpaceX and NASA officials as well as the launch weather officer briefed reporters about various aspects of the mission to the International Space Station, and what has been causing the delays.
Allen Flynt, Chief of Mission Services, Axiom Space, said the crew - Veteran US Astronaut and mission Commander Peggy Whitson, Group Captain Shukla, who is the pilot for the mission, and Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu from Hungary - have all exceeded the required training to ensure mission safety, scientific excellence and operational excellence.
"Yesterday, the crew successfully completed a dry run that confirmed our systems, teams, and procedures are ready to support the launch," Mr Flynt said.
Liquid Oxygen Leak, Thruster Issue
William Gerstenmaier, Vice-President for Build and Flight Reliability, SpaceX, however, said a liquid oxygen leak had been detected in the booster that was seen during its entry on its last mission. The leak had either not been fully repaired or not found, and troubleshooting is on.
"Human spaceflight is really core to SpaceX's ultimate mission, and flying crews safely is always our top priority. Spaceflight is really hard, and we're learning every day. The more we fly, the more we learn," Mr Gerstenmaier said.
Stating that the dry run had been successful, he said a "few things" had been discovered during static fire, which is when an engine or multiple engines of a rocket are fired while it is still secured to the launch mount.
"We found a LOX (liquid oxygen) leak that we had previously seen on this booster during its entry on its last mission, and discovered that we had not fully repaired the booster during refurbishment, or we actually didn't find the leak and didn't get it corrected. We have now gone out to the launch pad. We're continuing to troubleshoot that," the SpaceX official said.
Reassuringly, he added, "We should get that completed today, and we will have that back in configuration. And we are installing a purge that will essentially mitigate the leak if it still continues if we see it on launch day. So we will be fully ready to go fly."
Mr Gerstenmaier also said an issue had been detected with the thrust vector control, which helps the rocket manoeuvre.
"We also discovered an engine five thrust vector control problem, and we're going to change out the components associated with that. In fact, they're already changed out now. And we'll be complete with all our work this evening, and we'll be ready to support launch as early as tomorrow," he said.
"Again, I think this shows the difficulty of getting ready. You can always be prepared, but doing the testing, doing the dry runs, doing the activities with the crew to make sure we are really ready is tremendously important because we always learn something," he pointed out.
The emphasis, the SpaceX official said, is on ensuring the flight is a safe one.
"And I think one of the benefits of flying frequently and having a fleet of spacecraft is that it gives us the opportunity to review data regularly, and it allows us to look for data, look for small things, find things, improve things, and continue to fly safe. I think when you start assuming things are easy and you stop looking and you start just assuming things will go well, that's when trouble occurs, and we're not in that mode. We're continuing to learn and make sure that we are really ready to go fly," he stressed.
Weather Concerns
The weather in Florida, where the launch is going to be held, has been unpredictable and has been cited as the main reason for the delay from Sunday to Tuesday and now Wednesday - with Thursday being kept as a backup.
This was summed up best by Jimmy Taeger, Launch Weather Officer, 45th Weather Squadron, US Space Force, who said at the conference, "It's always fun forecasting in central Florida."
"It's quite dicey sometimes. So basically for the morning time period on Wednesday the 11th and also Thursday the 12th, there's just a possibility of seeing some isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms. Typically with the pattern that's going to be set up, we can sometimes have showers and thunderstorms right off the coast first in the mornings, and then later in the day, they tend to push further inland with the sea breeze," he said.
"So there's a possibility that some could be just off the coast. It could also be right over the launch pad, which is why there's also that flight through precipitation risk, but it doesn't look like it's going to be widespread. So the POV, that probability violation number, is on the lower end, 20% for Wednesday the 11th and 25% for Thursday the 12th," he added.
The winds, Mr Taeger said are pretty strong for the ascent corridor but are expected to weaken.
"So that does look better by Wednesday and especially into Thursday, and our precipitation and lightning risk is just going to continue because we have a stalled boundary that's pretty close to where the ascent corridor is, and there's just going to be some lingering showers and thunderstorms. So it will depend upon when it gets closer... but it doesn't look like that boundary is going to go anywhere at this time," he predicted.
Musk-Trump Tussle Impact?
SpaceX's William Gerstenmaier was also asked whether the very public fallout between US President Donald Trump and the company's founder and CEO Elon Musk would have an impact on the mission, given that it is supplying both the Falcon-9 rocket and the Dragon capsule - which will carry the crew - being used, and he answered that they are focused on the job at hand.
"In this environment, it's tremendously important for us to really stay focused on this mission. You know, I described to you how hard these missions are, and when you get complacent and you assume it's easy, problems can occur," he said.
"With this Axiom mission, we absolutely need to avoid a lot of this stuff that's happening on the outside and really stay focused on what we're doing today and keep the teams focused on looking at the vehicles, looking at the procedures, looking at the process, make sure that this international crew can have a great time on board the International Space Station, do tremendous science and research, and return safely home to their families," he stressed.