Blue Origin scrubs landmark New Shepard moon-gravity launch due to weather, rocket glitch
Blue Origin will have to wait a bit longer to get its first-ever moon-gravity mission off the ground.
The company, which was founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, had planned to launch its New Shepard suborbital vehicle for the 29th time this morning (Jan. 28) from its West Texas launch site. But two different issues conspired to prevent an on-time liftoff.
“We are scrubbing today’s launch. In addition to thick clouds we’ve been tracking all morning, we also encountered an issue related to the booster’s avionics. New launch target forthcoming,” Blue Origin announced via X today.
The uncrewed mission, known as NS-29, will carry 30 research payloads on a brief trip to suborbital space.
Twenty-nine of those experiments will test moon-related technology. So NS-29 will mimic lunar gravity conditions for two minutes, by spinning New Shepard’s capsule at a rate of 11 revolutions per minute.
“The payloads will experience at least two minutes of forces, a first for New Shepard and made possible in part through support from NASA,” Blue Origin wrote in a mission description. “The flight will test six broad lunar technology areas: in-situ resource utilization, dust mitigation, advanced habitation systems, sensors and instrumentation, small spacecraft technologies, and entry, descent and landing.”
Related: New Shepard: Rocket for space tourism
More than half of the payloads riding on NS-29 are supported by NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program. The agency is keen to gather more data about lunar conditions to aid its Artemis program, which is working to get people back to the moon a few years from now.
While New Shepard is best known as a space tourist vehicle, 19 of its 28 flights to date have been uncrewed. The reusable rocket-capsule combo last flew people on Nov. 22, a mission that sent “The Space Gal” Emily Calandrelli and five other folks to the final frontier.
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