USA/ Sunday's launch of the Ax-4 mission with Uznański-Wiśniewski was canceled

The planned launch of the Ax-4 mission with Polish astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski on Sunday has been canceled to allow additional time to analyze the situation on the International Space Station (ISS), NASA said. This is related to a leak in the Russian Zwiezda module.

NASA said in a statement that the decision to cancel Sunday's launch was made because "additional time is needed to continue to evaluate the performance of the International Space Station following recent repairs to the aft segment of the Zvezda service module." A new launch date is to be announced "in the coming days."

"Because of the space station's interconnected and interdependent systems, NASA wants to ensure the station is ready to accommodate additional crew members, and the agency is taking the necessary time to review the data," it said.

A detected air leak and pressure loss in the Russian ISS module prompted an early postponement of the Axiom mission last week. NASA later said the pressure had stabilized after repairs were made, but was under further observation.

The mission was originally scheduled to launch on May 29, but has since been postponed several times due to technical issues with the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, as well as weather.

The mission, which is to depart from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is Axiom Space's fourth commercial flight to the ISS. The astronauts - former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson (commander), pilot Shubhanshu Shukla from India, and scientific specialists Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu from Hungary - will spend up to 14 days on the ISS, performing about 60 scientific experiments, including 13 prepared by Polish scientists. They will fly to the station aboard the Crew Dragon capsule - the last one created by SpaceX - for which this will be the first flight into space.

Uznański-Wiśniewski will be the first Polish astronaut on the International Space Station.

From Washington Oskar Górzyński (PAP)

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