NASA, SpaceX delay Sunday Crew-6 flight until Monday

Feb. 22 (UPI) -- NASA and SpaceX announced that its manned Crew-6 flight scheduled to liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center on Sunday has been delayed 24 hours so engineers can work their way through what has been described as "minor issues."

SpaceX's capsule Endeavour was scheduled to launch on a Falcon 9 rocket Sunday evening. After a flight readiness review briefing on Tuesday afternoon, it was decided to hold off until 1:45 a.m., EST on Monday.

"We have noticed that there was blending done in some areas on the liner, and we have some testing and analysis to go make sure that those are good for flight," Steve Stich, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, said, according to Space.com.

Sultan Al-Neyadi, a member of the Crew-6 team, is set to become to first Arab astronaut to launch into space. He is from the United Arab Emirates. He will be joined by NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Woody Hoburg and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

Bowen has flown on three missions to the International Space Station on the Space Shuttle while it will be the first trip for the other three astronauts. The crew will remain on the ISS for six months.

The crew arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday for the fight. After all rocket and spacecraft systems are checked out and all components are certified for flight, teams will mate Dragon to the Falcon 9rocket in SpaceX's hangar.