Feb. 27 (UPI) -- The Crew-6 Mission to the International Space Station was scrubbed early Monday due to an issue with the Falcon 9's ignition system.
NASA and SpaceX were scheduled to launch a Flacon 9 rocket topped by the Dragon Endeavor spacecraft at 1:45 a.m. Monday from Launch Complex 39A in Florida's Cape Canaveral.
But with about 2 minutes and 30 seconds before liftoff, the launch was scrubbed over issues on the ground with the TEA-TEB ignition fluid that is used to ignite the rocket's engines.
As there is only one shot a day for a launch to the space station, the liftoff was pushed roughly 24 hours to early Tuesday when they will try again to send the Crew-6 Mission to the orbital laboratory.
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Crew-6 was originally supposed to launch on Sunday, but NASA and SpaceX last week had delayed the liftoff 24 hours to Monday morning to allow engineers time to work on what were called "minor issues."
The mission is to be the sixth crew rotation flight of a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and its seventh with astronauts, including a test flight, to the space station under NASA's commercial crew program.
The four crew members of NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren "Woody" Hoburg along with United Arab Emirates astronaut Sultan Alneyadi and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev were to arrive at the International Space Station some 25 hours after liftoff.
Their arrival, when it happens, will be followed by a short handover period from the SpaceX Crew-5 Mission who will depart the microgravity laboratory for home next month. NASA astronauts Nicole Mann, Josh Cassada and cosmonaut Anna Kikina and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata have been living on the space station since Oct. 6.
Crew-6 is to be on the low-Earth orbit station for up to six months as they perform science, experiments and space station maintenance.
