Blue Origin could try again to send up its New Glenn rocket for the first time with an overnight launch early Thursday, but the weather forecast could pose problems.
The heavy-lift rocket for Jeff Bezos’ company is trying to become a competitor for SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Dubbed NG-1, the mission has a launch window from 1-4 a.m. set to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36, and a backup window early Friday during the same timeframe.
Space Launch Delta 45’s weather squadron forecasts only a 40% chance for good launch conditions during the Thursday window, and projects a moderate chance for bad conditions downrange where the company will attempt to recover the rocket’s booster. A 24-hour delay sees conditions improve to 90% for good weather at the launch site, but still a moderate chance for bad weather in the Atlantic.
The attempt follows an early Monday morning scrub that had great weather conditions, but ultimately fell victim to issues at the launch pad. The company stated that ice had formed on a purge line of an auxiliary power unit that powered some hydraulic systems. Blue Origin recycled the countdown clock several times trying to work through the problem, but ultimately called it off.
That followed weather-related delays the previous week due to rough weather about 620 miles away in the Atlantic where the company had planned to station its recovery vessel named Jacklyn, named after Bezos’ mother.
Similar to how SpaceX lands Falcon 9 boosters, New Glenn is designed for reuse with the first stages targeting up to 25 flights, although landing the booster is not the main goal of the debut flight.
“We want to be clear about our objectives. This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it. But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations is a replacement for flying this rocket,” Blue Origin commentator Ariane Cornell said during a broadcast during the last launch attempt.
“Our key objective today is to reach orbit safely. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake,” she added. “We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious —but we’re going for it. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”
The payload for NG-1 won’t be deployed once the second stage gets to orbit. It’s simply pathfinder hardware to test out communication and telemetry for a Blue Origin system called Blue Ring that will be used to deploy future customer payloads.
The mission, though, will act as one of two required flights to gain Space Force certification that would open up New Glenn as an option to fly national security missions for the Department of Defense.
Blue Origin has already gained approval alongside SpaceX and ULA under the National Space Security Launch Phase 3 program to compete for contracts from among 30 missions to be assigned over the next four years worth up to $5.6 billion.
The company also has several commercial customers on tap including Bezos’ old company Amazon that has contracted for at least 12 launches to send up hundreds of satellites for its Project Kuiper internet constellation, which aims to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink.
New Glenn is also tapped by NASA to fly a pair of Mars-bound satellites and will be the rocket to launch Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar landers, one of which is contracted to be the human landing system for the Artemis V mission no earlier than 2029.
Bezos has sunk billions into the company, which to date has only launched its suborbital New Shepard rockets from its West Texas launch site.
A 321 feet tall, New Glenn is more than five times taller than New Shepard.
It’s powered by seven of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, versions of which are flight proven having successfully launched ULA’s new Vulcan rockets twice in 2024. While Vulcan only used two BE-4s, the seven on New Glenn can produce 3.85 million pounds of thrust on liftoff, which makes it more than twice as powerful than SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and more powerful than ULA’s Atlas V and retired Delta IV Heavy rockets.
New Glenn also will offer the largest cargo space among its competitors with a nearly 23-foot diameter fairing, the structure that forms the cone at the top of the rocket. That’s compared to the roughly 17- to 18-foot diameter fairing found on Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Vulcan rockets.
The rocket stages are manufactured and integrated with its engines at Blue Origin’s Rocket Park located adjacent Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Merritt Island. Final prep for launch including fueling occurs at facilities at LC-36.
Blue Origin took over the lease for LC-36 in 2015, investing about $1 billion in the pad site alone. It was previously used for government launches from 1962-2005 including lunar lander Surveyor 1 in 1967 and some of the Mariner probes.