PORT CANAVERAL, Fla. (WESH) – SpaceX is scheduled to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on Monday evening.
The rocket is waiting and ready on the cape after three consecutive bad weather delays.
Sunday’s scrub was caused by a cruise ship that ventured into the launch exclusion zone, forcing the Falcon 9 to stay put on launchpad 40.
The ship in question was confirmed by the Coast Guard on Monday as Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas. Canaveral is the vessel’s home port.
The head of the port said that this was an isolated incident outside of their control. The Coast Guard is investigating.
However, this may not be the last time this happens, according to Dale Ketcham of Space Florida.
“We are seeing more of this and we’re going to see more of it in the future. Because you have the busiest, most-successful spaceport in the world immediately adjacent to the second busiest cruise port in the world,” Ketcham said.
The Falcon 9 is to fly in a southeast corridor, nearly paralleling the coast. This is a polar launch that had not been used for decades but was brought back about two years ago, making the exclusion zones more complex.
This Falcon 9 is a commercial mission with an Italian Earth-observation satellite onboard.
“In this case, it’s two commercial enterprises taking advantage of the same air space and water space,” Ketcham said. “We need to make sure that as we evolved as a commercial spaceport and growing seaport that the rules and policies are in place and well known by all the participants.”
SpaceX says everything with the rocket and payload is healthy for the launch attempt today. The window opens at 6:11 p.m.
