Update for 10:40 p.m. ET on June 10: SpaceX announced on Tuesday evening that it has delayed the planned June 11 launch of the Ax-4 private astronaut mission to the ISS due to a liquid oxygen leak in its Falcon 9 rocket. No new target date has been announced.
SpaceX will launch four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on the private Ax-4 mission Wednesday morning (June 11), and you can watch the action live.
Ax-4 is scheduled to lift off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT). That's a one-day delay; SpaceX had been targeting Tuesday morning (June 10) but pushed things back due to expected high winds in the area.
You can watch the launch live here at Space.com, courtesy of SpaceX and Axiom Space, the Houston-based company that organized the mission. The webcast will be at the top of this story, as well as on Space.com's homepage, when the time comes.
As the mission's name suggests, Ax-4 will be Axiom Space's fourth crewed trip to the ISS. Its astronauts will launch aboard a brand-new SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which will earn its wings on the flight.
Ax-4 is led by commander Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who is currently Axiom's director of human spaceflight. Whitson has spent 675 days in space to date, more than any other American.
The mission's other three crewmembers are pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India; Polish mission specialist Sławosz Uznański of the European Space Agency; and mission specialist Tibor Kapu of Hungary.
These latter three will make history on Ax-4, becoming the first people from their respective countries to live on board the ISS.
The Ax-4 astronauts will spend about two weeks living and working on the orbiting lab. They'll conduct 60 scientific experiments during that time — more than any previous Axiom Space mission has performed.
The mission will end with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Ax-4's return date has not yet been set; it will depend on weather conditions in the splashdown zone.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 12:30 p.m. ET on Monday (June 9) with the new target launch date of Wednesday (June 11).
