The planned launch early Monday of a rocket from SpaceX to the International Space Station (ISS) was canceled at the last minute due to a ground systems problemannounced the POT.

Launch was scheduled at 1:45 GMT (6:45 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (southeast United States) with a multicultural crew, Crew6, the sixth to travel to the ISS on a regular rotation mission guaranteed by SpaceX .

The capsule the crew had to travel on consisted of two American astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and an Emirati astronautwould dock at the ISS after a journey of about a day.

But two minutes before takeoff, it was canceled. “#Crew6 launch was aborted today due to a ground system issue,” NASA tweeted.

SpaceX indicated shortly afterwards that it was beginning to remove fuel from the rocket and specified that the crew would disembark.

“The next available launch attempt is at 00:34 a.m. on Thursday, March 2 pending resolution of the technical issue that prevented Monday’s launch,” SpaceX said.

Originally scheduled for Sunday, the launch had already been delayed by NASA for 24 hours.

The Americans Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburgthe Russian Andrey Fedyaev and the Emirates Sultan Al Nejadi they have to spend six months in the ISS.

Sultan Al Neyadi, 41, will become the fourth astronaut from an Arab country in history, and the first from his country, to spend six months in space. His compatriot Hazzaa Al Mansoori had carried out an eight-day mission in 2019.

“We are physically, mentally and technically prepared,” he told reporters when he arrived at the space center on Tuesday. “It’s a great honor to be here, even a privilege,” he added.

The mission also includes a Russian cosmonaut, just as tensions between Washington and Moscow are at an all-time high, one year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Before the Moscow offensive, it was already planned that the Russians would travel with SpaceX and the Americans with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, an exchange program that was maintained. The ISS represents one of the last areas of cooperation between the two countries.

NASA contracts the services of the American company to send its astronauts to the laboratory about every six months.

There they conduct scientific experiments and take care of the maintenance of the stationinhabited for more than 22 years.

Crew-6 replaces the four members of Crew-5 (two Americans, one Russian and one Japanese), who arrived in October 2022 and will return to Earth aboard their own SpaceX ship.

Also on board the ISS are three other passengers (two Russians and one American), who arrived by Soyuz spacecraft.

The Russian missile leaked in December. The country’s space agency, Roscosmos, sent a rescue craft, which successfully docked with the ISS on Saturday.