The 321 feet (98m) tall rocket was scheduled to take off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and to send NASA’s ESCAPADE twin spacecraft to Mars.
- On its first flight in January, New Glenn successfully entered orbit, but the booster did not land as planned.
- Blue Origin is already running several years behind schedule, and a successful launch could raise confidence in future takeoffs, including key NASA missions.
- The company stated that it has collaborated with the Federal Aviation Administration to determine a launch window between 2:50 p.m. and 4:17 p.m. ET.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin delayed the second launch of its New Glenn rocket at least till Wednesday, after scrapping its scheduled launch on Sunday due to bad weather.
The company stated that it has collaborated with the Federal Aviation Administration to determine a launch window between 2:50 p.m. and 4:17 p.m. ET. The 321 feet (98m) tall rocket was scheduled to take off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and to send NASA’s ESCAPADE twin spacecraft to Mars.
What Caused the Launch Delay?
Blue Origin blamed the delay on bad weather, specifically the Cumulus Cloud Rule, which prohibits launches when electric fields are present. The launch was also affected by an issue with its ground support equipment at the launchpad.
According to a Bloomberg News report, the launch was already facing problems after the FAA issued an emergency order restricting both airline flights and commercial space launches. The company reportedly said in a press briefing that Blue Origin was working closely with the FAA and NASA “on opportunities for exceptions to the policy based on how our mission goes.”
Why Is This Mission Important?
As per NASA, the ESCAPADE mission will use two identical spacecraft to investigate how the solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment and how this interaction drives the planet’s atmospheric escape.
The likes of Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, and Firefly Aerospace are vying to take a bigger slice of the lucrative launch market from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is responsible for the lion’s share of commercial launches. Retail sentiment on Stocktwits about Rocket Lab, which is also collaborating on the ESCAPADE mission, was in the ‘bullish’ territory at the time of writing.
If the launch had gone through successfully, the first stage of the rocket would have headed toward a barge named Jacklyn, a landing platform located several hundred miles downrange in the Atlantic. The New Glenn has been designed as a partially reusable rocket like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, to allow for multiple uses of the booster. On its first flight in January, New Glenn entered orbit, but Blue Origin failed to land the booster successfully.
Blue Origin is already running several years behind schedule, and a successful launch could raise confidence in future takeoffs, including key NASA missions such as the Artemis missions to the Moon. According to the Bloomberg report, in January, Chief Executive Officer Dave Limp stated that Blue Origin aimed for a second launch by late spring and a total of six to eight flights in 2025.
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