Only 30% favorable weather for NASA SpaceX CRS-24 resupply mission to the ISS for Tuesday December 21st 2021 at 5:06 AM EST or 10:06 UTC!

The weather is looking very poor for an early morning launch attempt on Tuesday 12-21-21 with strong storms pushing in from the North over Cape Kennedy during the instantaneous launch window with heavy rain, flooding and lightning are expected.

NASA & SpaceX are using a brand new booster B-1069.1 on its maiden flight carrying Cargo Dragon C-209 packed with food, resupply equipment, hardware and new science investigations for the Crew 66 expedition currently on the ISS now. Per Bob Dempsey acting deputy chief scientist for the ISS program over 500 science investigations have been worked on just in the past year in this amazing low earth orbiting laboratory.

Some of the investigations being flown on this mission include: Protein Crystal Growth Study for cancer treatment drug delivery systems, a hand held bio printer for printing tissue directly on wounds in space, an investigation from makers of Tide that will study detergent efficacy in micro gravity and four different colleges from the (SPOCS) Student Payload Opportunity with Citizen Science Program. More information form personal interviews with two of the college teams from Columbia and Idaho Universities will be discussed in the future launch article when a successful launch attempt is completed.

Media was also granted a photo opportunity of NASA’s most powerful rocket ever built the SLS Space Launch System Artemis 1 rocket which is now fully stacked in the VAB building including the service module from ESA and the Orion spacecraft.

Photos with this article are from the 16th floor of high bay 4 looking over the expansive loading aisle into high bay 3 and only shows about one third of the total rocket due to the working platforms blocking most of the view below.

It was still incredible to see this mammoth rocket as NASA works to solve an engine flight controller needing replacement pushing the launch to March or April in 2022.

Article and Photos from Scott Schilke for spacenews.lu & space-news.es

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