Elon Musk's SpaceX halted Tuesday's launch of a long-delayed navigation satellite for the U.S. military, postponing for at least a day the space transportation company's first designated national security mission for the United States. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a roughly $500 million global positioning system (GPS) satellite built by Lockheed Martin Corp, was due to take off from Florida's Cape Canaveral shortly after 9:30 a.m. local time (1730 GMT), but was stopped minutes before takeoff. "This abort was triggered by the onboard Falcon 9 flight computer," a SpaceX official narrating the launch sequence said, adding that SpaceX would attempt the launch on Wednesday morning. SpaceX later tweeted that the Falcon 9 and payload remain healthy and cited an "out of family" reading on the rocket's first stage sensors for the delay.U.S. The launch marks SpaceX's first so-called National Security Space mission as defined by the U.S. military, SpaceX said.In 2017, the Hawthorne, California-based company launched payloads for the Department of Defense that were not designated as a National Security Space missions.

Source: dna December 18, 2018 17:37 UTC