New Glenn, a high orbital rocket that Blue Origin Jeff Bezos Designed to compete with SpaceX's dominant Falcon rockets, the Falcon is back for its second launch – this time with the task of sending two spacecraft on a long, winding journey to Mars.
The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket was scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida during an 88-minute launch window that opened at 2:45 pm ET on Sunday. But Blue Origin was revealed during live broadcast cloud cover rolled over the area, preventing takeoff. (Rockets often want to avoid clouds because flying through them can cause lightning to strike.)
“We are considering options for our next launch attempt based on the weather forecast,” the company said in a social media post.
Blue Origin officials previously said they had the option to try again during Monday's launch. However, the weather forecast for the opportunity was “somewhat consistent” with Sunday's conditions, noted Laura Maginnis, New Glenn's vice president for mission management, during a Saturday news conference.
The Federal Aviation Administration recently announced that it will put an end to for commercial rocket launches from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time starting Monday to ease the burden on air traffic controllers amid the government shutdown.
“We're working very closely with both our partners at the FAA and the NASA team to ensure that we're certainly following and respecting the expectations for the airspace,” Maginnis said.
Blue Origin's Monday launch window will run from 2:40 pm to 4:08 pm ET, according to a press release.
Blue Origin aims to reuse rocket boosters
Blue Origin is also trying to land and return the New Glenn first-stage booster, which is the lowest part of the rocket that gives the initial boost of power at takeoff, on a sea-going barge called the Jacklyn. Very similar to Blue Origin. SpaceX's main competitor Blue Origin's rockets, long a dominant force in the commercial launch business, are designed to be partially reused to reduce costs.
Blue Origin had hoped to make its first rocket landing attempt during New Glenn's first orbital flight in January, but the engines failed to restart properly, causing the rocket to veer off course.
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket lifts off on its first launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on January 16. – Steve Nesius/Reuters
However, the main objective of Blue Origin's January launch – delivering a test satellite called Blue Ring Pathfinder into orbit – went off without a hitch, prompting the company to declare the flight a success.
But Blue Origin believes that safely recovering and reusing its rocket boosters is critical to its business model.
Maginnis said during a news conference Saturday that working to figure out why the launch vehicle failed to land in January and making fixes to help it succeed this time were the main reasons Blue Origin waited nearly 10 months to attempt a second New Glenn launch.
“We've made a number of changes to our fuel management system, as well as some minor hardware changes, to increase the likelihood of landing this booster,” Maginnis said.
But, she added, “if we don’t land the launch vehicle, it’s okay. We have several more machines in production.”
Maginnis declined to say how many booster packs Blue Origin has in production.
New Glenn's next flight, which was planned for this year but currently does not have an exact launch date, is expected to carry a Blue Origin-developed lunar lander called Mark 1 to the lunar surface.
NASA's Escapade Mars Mission
After the flight, Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket will send two satellites into deep space. The orbiters are expected to linger before heading to Mars next year, when the red planet is better positioned for a less fuel-intensive journey.
NASA's Escapade spacecraft, or Explorers Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics, is shown here during inspection and processing at the Astrotech Space Operations Center near the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Aug. 22. – Kim Shiflett/NASA
The mission, called Escapade—short for Escape and Plasma Acceleration Dynamics Explorers—is a low-cost planetary science project funded by NASA and led by the University of California, Berkeley, with support from commercial companies Advanced Space and Rocket Lab.
If everything goes according to plan, the devices will arrive in Mars orbit in 2027.
Once there, the spacecraft will work in tandem to figure out why the planet began losing its atmosphere billions of years ago, as well as study how its harsh climate might affect future explorers.
“We will make the space weather measurements we need to understand the system well enough to predict solar storms, the radiation from which could harm astronauts on the surface of Mars or in orbit,” mission principal investigator Robert Lillis of the Space Science Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement.
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