Posted: Sat 30th May 2020

Watch the SpaceX Dragon astronaut launch live tonight (second attempt) – unlikely visible in sky after

Wrexham.com for people living in or visiting the Wrexham area
This article is old - Published: Saturday, May 30th, 2020

Tonight sees a rare opportunity to watch a manned spaceflight from the UK, and a historic flight as well – the second attempt at launch.

Nasa and SpaceX are launching two astronauts to the International Space Station this evening via the ‘Dragon’ capsule, the first manned flight for SpaceX and the first time there has been manned flight from the USA since 2011. The two people on board tonight are Doug Hurley, the spacecraft commander with Bob Behnken as joint operations commander.

The launch takes place at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida scheduled for Saturday May 30 19:22 UTC (15:22 local EDT) – which is at 20:22 our time (19:22 GMT). The last attempt a few days ago was scrubbed due to bad weather in Florida. There is again concerns over “Probability of Violating Weather Constraints”.

Sadly the view outside wont be as good as it would have been on the first attempt, as the trajectory means it will be much much lower on the horizon when it is theoretically visible. It is likely to be too low to see when the visible pass is made at 22:15 – however for those who want to give it a go look low on the horizon in a south west direction, with the pass being made west to east.

Locally the Met Office says visibility is “Very Good” and it should be a lovely night to be stargazing let alone rocket spotting – with temperatures being around 17C in the evening

NASA are streaming the launch on its website – https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive and SpaceX also provide similar feeds. Often with such launches it is worth tuning in several minutes beforehand to hear the full rundown of the checklists before launch, and be aware various ‘stops’ might take place delaying the launch for several seconds, minutes or even hours.

It is not unusual for launches to miss the ‘window’ for launch, meaning the entire process is scrubbed for the day. If that does take place there are several further launch windows where the above will happen again.



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