Updated at 10:25 a.m. ETPoised on the brink of ushering in a new era, NASA's historic launch pad in Florida will need to wait another day for its milestone. At the last minute, the private space company SpaceX scrubbed its Saturday launch, which would have marked the first time the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A was used in over half a decade.Instead, the launch will wait at least 24 hours while SpaceX takes a "closer look at positioning of the second stage engine nozzle," an anomaly that came to light shortly before liftoff. The company plans to try again on Sunday.Taken on its face, the launch itself is not particularly notable. Naturally, it's no mean feat to send a rocket to space, but missions like this one happen all the time. The International Space Station needs provisions, after all, and the 5,500 pounds of supplies and materials for scientific experiments would be a common (if still impressive) load for a resupply mission.Rather, the liftoff now scheduled for Sunday is making history not for its cargo but precisely where it will be taking place: the pad that served as the launch site for the Apollo 11 mission that first sent humans to the moon in 1969.In fact, Launch Complex 39A served as a pad for many of the most famous missions in NASA's history — from the first missions to space that packed a human crew, to the decades-long space shuttle program that helped construct the orbiting station SpaceX's rocket will be supplying.As NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell reports for our Newscast unit, the SpaceX mission marks something of a sea change for the historic launch pad:
