Q&A with Sara Seager, deputy director of science on NASA’s TESS mission (members only)

Forecasters predict mostly cloudy conditions and a chance of light rain for Tuesday morning’s scheduled takeoff of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a space station-bound supply ship, with a 40 percent chance weather could prevent liftoff during an instantaneous predawn launch opportunity.

SpaceX launched an unpiloted Crew Dragon spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT) Sunday. SpaceX triggered an escape maneuver using the Dragon’s thrusters about a minute-and-a-half after liftoff to verify the launch abort engines can safely carry the capsule — and astronauts on future missions — away from a failing rocket.

The Crew Dragon Endeavour was originally set to undock from the International Space Station back in September, but was stalled by a pair of hurricanes and other weather events. Undocking happened 5:05 p.m. EDT (2105 UTC) on Oct. 23, setting up splashdown at 3:23 a.m. EDT (0725 UTC) on Friday.