Blue Origin will take another shot at launching its inaugural New Glenn rocket early Thursday morning, weather permitting.
The space company, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, faced literal and figurative headwinds during its first attempts to launch its more than 30-story-tall rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The latest launch attempt is scheduled to liftoff from Launch Complex 36 during a three-hour window that opens at 1 a.m. EST (0600 UTC). Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning 90 minutes prior to launch.
Weather at the pad doesn’t look ideal for a Thursday morning launch, but would improve in a 24-hour backup, according to launch weather officers with the 45th Weather Squadron.
“A developing area of low pressure situated across the western Gulf of Mexico will bring increasing clouds to Central Florida today and tonight, with upstream observations and model guidance suggesting a higher risk of Thick Cloud Layers concerns compared to yesterday’s forecast for tonight’s launch attempt,” meteorologists wrote.
“This slug of mid-level moisture is expected to get stripped off from the parent low and thin out by Thursday night as surface high pressure builds south into Florida, yielding improved weather prospects for the backup launch opportunity.”
Blue Origin said an issue that prevented Monday’s launch was “ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit that powers some of [New Glenn’s] hydraulic systems.” Teams worked to clear that issue during the three-hour window, but weren’t able to do so in time.
They were further stymied from launching on Tuesday due to poor weather.
One of the goals of the NG-1 mission is to attempt to land the first stage booster, named ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,’ on Blue Origin’s landing vessel, named ‘Jacklyn,’ which is positioned out in the Atlantic Ocean.
Launch weather officers forecast a “moderate” risk for landing the booster during both the primary and backup launch windows.
“For booster recovery conditions, seas will build into the 6-7 feet range for the primary window, with similar to slightly lower seas for Friday morning,” meteorologists wrote. “Winds will be acceptable for landing on both primary and backup landing opportunities although an increase in winds is expected for the backup day.”
In addition to gathering data about the rocket and the launch flow, Blue Origin will also learn more about its orbital space tug, the Blue Ring. While it won’t be hosting or deploying any satellites on this mission, it will serve to “validate space to ground communications capabilities by sending commands, receiving telemetry, receiving store and compute mission data, and performing radiometric tracking (for navigation).”
If all goes according to plan with the New Glenn upper stage, known as Glenn Stage 2 (GS2), it will fly into a highly elliptical orbit in the range of the medium Earth orbit, with an apogee of 19,300 km and a perigee of 2,400 km at a 30 degree inclination.
