Everything looked good for a SpaceX rocket launch on Thursday evening, but with just 1 minute and 40 seconds to go, the company stopped the countdown and announced the launch was going to have to wait for another day.
This would have been SpaceX's second launch mission for the year, which is set to transport the SES-9 communications satellite into orbit over Asia.
SpaceX engineers said during a live webcast that the rocket was in good health. And right now, the SpaceX team is reviewing the data to determine the next available launch date.
Thursday's launch attempt was actually a back-up for the original launch date, which was scheduled for Wednesday. Wednesday's launch was postponed due to inclement weather.
It is unclear when SpaceX will announce its next launch attempt, but once the date is set we'll start to get excited for another rocket landing attempt, which was scheduled to take place shortly after Thursday's launch. The landing attempt was planned to happen on a floating ocean platform called "Of Course I Still Love You."
Rocket landings are something that humans had never witnessed until 2015 – when the private spaceflight companies Blue Origin and SpaceX became the first in history to launch rockets to space and return them safely.
This is an incredible feat of engineering and will prove to be the defining factor between 20th century and 21st century spaceflight.
Right now, we're still in the infancy of reusable rocket technology, but if this proves to be a viable method for spaceflight, it would drastically cut spaceflight costs and potentially open a new world of possibilities for crewed space exploration.
