Launch To ISS Pushed To Thursday Over Weather: NASA

Washington, United States: NASA on Monday delayed by one day the journey of four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) over weather conditions.

The US space agency is now targeting February 12 for the lift-off of Crew-12's mission aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a window opening at 5:38am local time (1038 GMT).

"Mission teams completed a weather review on Monday and elected to waive off a Wednesday, February 11, launch opportunity due to forecast weather conditions along the flight path of the Dragon spacecraft," NASA said in a statement.

"Weather will continue to be a watch item on Feb 12, and conditions are expected to improve on Friday, February 13."

Crew-12 is composed of Americans Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, along with French astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

Those astronauts remain in quarantine in NASA's Florida Kennedy Space Center ahead of Thursday's launch opportunity.

The mission will be replacing Crew-11, which returned to Earth in January a month earlier than planned during the first medical evacuation in the space station's history.

The scientific laboratory, which orbits 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth, has since been staffed by a skeleton crew of three.

Continuously inhabited for the last quarter-century, the aging ISS is scheduled to be de-orbited and crashed into an isolated spot in the Pacific Ocean in 2030.

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