SpaceX readies supply mission launch

WASHINGTON: NASA and US firm SpaceX are watching carefully to see if the weather will cooperate Sunday for the first launch of SpaceX's $1.6 billion contract to supply the International Space Station.
With just hours to go before liftoff, NASA said there was 40 percent chance of unfavorable weather -- specifically clouds and rain -- that could force a delay until Monday. That forecast has remained unchanged for several days.
SpaceX has said they have a "single instantaneous launch opportunity," meaning if they miss their scheduled take-off time -- at 8:35 pm (0035 GMT) -- they must wait until the next day.
Technicians are set to roll out the Dragon capsule, loaded with around 1,000 pounds (455 kilograms) of supplies, and the Falcon 9 rocket that will power it into orbit to the launch pad five minutes before liftoff.
The launch is the next step in American efforts to commercialize the space industry, in the hope of reducing costs and spreading them among a wider group than governments alone.
SpaceX, owned by billionaire Paypal co-founder Elon Musk, is one of several private companies working with the US space agency to send flights to and from the ISS. NASA has been relying on Russian spacecraft for the last year, after retiring its fleet of shuttles.
The launch marks SpaceX's second flight this year. In May, the company proved its mettle with a test flight to the orbiting outpost, conducting a near flawless nine-day trip to deliver cargo to the $100 billion orbiting outpost -- the first time a commercial outfit had sent its own capsule there and back.
Although the equipment and software are largely the same this time around, SpaceX said the launch is hardly routine.
"Every time we fly, we learn something," SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said in a Saturday press conference.
But Musk, the company owner, said earlier he aims to get to a point where space launches are nothing out of the ordinary.
"The ultimate thing is to try to get spaceflight as routine as air flight. I don't think it can quite get there but it can get closer than it has been in the past," he said during an online "hangout" hosted by Google+.
Like traveling by plane, Musk said he hopes one of the payoffs will be that everyday people, not just the rich, can one day afford a seat.
"Perhaps it can be brought down to being only 10 times more expensive" than a seat on an airplane, he said. "It can happen. If we can make rapidly and fully reusable spacecraft."
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden added that part of commercializing the space industry will mean the private sector building new low-orbit destinations where companies can use the zero gravity environment for things like materials processing and pharmaceuticals research.
"That's what we're trying to do, is facilitate the true development of a real commercial industry where the government is an anchor tenant but not the primary source of income," Bolden said during the Google+ chat.
SpaceX says it has 50 launches planned -- both NASA missions and commercial flights -- representing about $4 billion in contracts.
But the Dragon capsule's cargo is not commercial: the manifest lists supplies from NASA, along with the Japanese and European space agencies.
If the launch goes as planned, the Dragon capsule should reach the space station by Wednesday, and stay there for two weeks.
It is scheduled to return to Earth -- splashing down off the coast of southern California -- on October 28, carrying about 734 pounds of scientific tests and results.
So far, SpaceX has only sent unmanned flights into orbit, but the company aims to send a manned flight within the next three or four years. It is under a separate contract with NASA to refine the capsule so that it can carry a crew.