A cutting-edge observational instrument set to be aimed at Earth from its perch on the International Space Station has been grounded by the same type of weather patterns its designed to study.

The launching of the ISS-RapidScat, which will "monitor ocean winds for climate research, weather predictions and hurricane monitoring from the space station," according to a news release from the National Auronatics and Space Administration, was delayed early Saturday morning due to inclement weather.

A NASA said that "because of weather conditions that violated the rules for launching," Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, the California-based commercial transport company that's successfully sent three previous cargo missions to the ISS for NASA, postponed its planned 2:14 a.m. EDT launch of its Falcon 9 rocket.

Aside from the ISS-RapidScat, the Dragon cargo module set atop the giant launch vehicle will carry an estimated 5,000 pounds of supplies, science experiments and technology demonstrations -- including critical materials to support 255 science and research investigations during the station's Expeditions 41 and 42.

The next launch opportunity happens at about at 1:52 a.m. EDT Sunday, Sept. 21 -- which will still be Saturday, Sept. 20, at approximately 10:52 p.m. PDT.

By the end of the decade, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration says, six Earth science instruments will be mounted on the the station to aid scientists study the changing planet.

The second instrument planned for station delivery -- on the fifth SpaceX resupply flight in December -- is the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System, or CATS, a laser instrument designed to measure clouds and the location and distribution of airborne particles, such as mineral dust, smoke and other types of substances that end up polluting in the atmosphere.

The space station-based instruments join 17 NASA Earth-observing missions currently providing data on Earth's the dynamic global system.

The station's orbit will allow the ISS-RapidScat to make repeated, regular observations over the same locations at different times of day, offering unique near-global measurements of how winds change over a 24-hour period.

Nine days after the capsule docks with the station, the ISS-RapidScat instrument is scheduled to be installed on the External Payload Facility SDX site of the Columbus module over a three-day period by the robotic arm with commands from the ground.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are scheduled to activate the instrument about 12 to 18 days after launch. A two-week period of calibration and validation will follow, before RapidScat begins its two-year science mission.