Nasa SpaceX launch - as it happened: Historic liftoff cancelled moments before takeoff over weather

SpaceX promo video for first crewed mission

Nasa has postponed its first launch of astronauts from US soil in nine years due to bad weather, just minutes before lift-off.

Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley were due to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) on a rocket and capsule system built by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's firm SpaceX.

But with rain and thunderstorms looming, the launch date has now been moved to Saturday at 20:22 pm UK time.

An estimated 1.7 million people from around the world tuned in to the launch from The Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

However, as the weather conditions became worse, the US space agency "scrubbed" the mission for safety reasons less than 17 minutes before the Falcon 9 rocket was due to take off, along with the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

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[27 May 2020 22:51 · Andrew Griffin]

The astronauts seats are being rotated so that they're able to get up. (The astronauts are currently lying on their back, and they have to swivel around – with the same slow, mechanic motion as an electric seat in a car – so that they're actually able to stand up and leave.)

[27 May 2020 22:52 · Andrew Griffin]

Mission controls thanks the astronauts for their help "testing our scrub timeline". The astronauts say that it was a "great practice".

That brings an end to proceedings, as SpaceX and Nasa look forward to trying again on Saturday.