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Blue Origin resets the plan for first orbital launch … twice!

New Glenn rocket on Florida launch pad
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket stands on its Florida launch pad. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Over the course of just a few hours today, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture made two adjustments to the schedule for launching its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket to orbit for the first time.

At first, Blue Origin said it would attempt liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 tonight, during a three-hour launch window beginning at 1 a.m. ET Jan. 14 (10 p.m. PT Jan. 13). But less than two and a half hours later, the company pushed back the launch date to the same time frame early Jan. 16 ET (late Jan. 15 PT).

No reason was immediately given for the quick change, but in today’s first announcement, Blue Origin acknowledged that a “poor weather forecast at LC-36 could result in missing” tonight’s launch window.

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Glitch forces a delay for Blue Origin’s first orbital launch

New Glenn rocket on Florida launch pad
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket stands on its Florida launch pad. (Blue Origin via YouTube)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture counted down to the final hour tonight, but in the end, the company had to postpone the first-ever orbital launch of its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket due to a stubborn technical glitch.

The launch from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was scrubbed a few minutes after 3 a.m. ET (midnight PT). Today’s three-hour launch window was due to close at 4 a.m. ET.

“We are standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said. “We are reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.”

Liftoff had already been delayed twice over the past few days due to concerns about rough seas in the area of the Atlantic where New Glenn’s first-stage booster was slated to land — and the fact that the seas had settled down raised hopes that the launch could take place tonight. But it was not to be.

Whenever it takes place, this would be a milestone launch: Although Blue Origin has been launching much smaller New Shepard rockets on suborbital spaceflights for a decade, it has never tried putting a payload into Earth orbit. That would change with New Glenn’s liftoff.

If New Glenn meets with success, that would mean more competition for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which currently dominates the orbital launch industry. It would also open the way for a host of applications that Blue Origin aims to support — ranging from satellite constellations to moon missions to a commercial space station.

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T-Mobile and SpaceX provide satellite links amid LA fires

T-Mobile support truck on street in LA wildfire zone
T-Mobile’s support trucks hit the streets in fire-threatened neighborhoods of Los Angeles. (T-Mobile Photo)

T-Mobile has opened up direct-to-cellular emergency texting over SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network on a temporary basis in areas affected by this week’s catastrophic wildfires in the Los Angeles area.

In a news release, Bellevue, Wash.-based T-Mobile said the satellite service can be used to send texts to loved ones, deliver wireless emergency alerts and enable 911 texting. “While SpaceX’s direct-to-cell constellation has not been fully deployed, we are once again temporarily making this early test version available for those who need it the most,” T-Mobile said.

John Saw, T-Mobile’s chief technology officer, pointed out in a posting to the X social-media platform that the system should work even in areas without commercial power or terrestrial cell coverage.

Satellite texting could be a lifesaver in areas of the wildfire zone where cell towers have been knocked out of service. “Can’t burn down a tower when there is no tower,” Ben Longmier, SpaceX’s senior director of satellite engineering, said on X.

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Blue Origin resets the date for New Glenn’s orbital debut

Blue Origin’s New Glenn on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
Blue Origin’s New Glenn on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. (Blue Origin Image)

UPDATE: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s delaying the first-ever launch of its orbital-class New Glenn rocket due to unfavorable weather conditions for landing the first-stage booster.

Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 in Florida had been scheduled for no earlier than 1 a.m. ET Jan. 10 (10 p.m. PT tonight). But in an update posted to the X social-media platform, Blue Origin said the attempt has been rescheduled for a three-hour launch window that opens at 1 a.m. ET Jan. 12 (10 p.m. PT Jan. 11).

The schedule shift was made “due to a high sea state in the Atlantic where we hope to land our booster,” Blue Origin said. Video coverage of the countdown is expected to be streamed via BlueOrigin.com starting about an hour before liftoff.

New Glenn, which is named after the late pioneer astronaut John Glenn, is due to launch Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder, a payload that’s designed to test the communications, power and control systems for the company’s Blue Ring multi-use space platform. The test flight is part of a prototyping effort for orbital logistics that’s supported by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.

Blue Origin has been working on the development of New Glenn for more than a decade — and mission controllers are likely to be monitoring the performance of the two-stage rocket at least as closely as they’ll be monitoring the payload.

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Universe Today

NASA lays out two new options for Mars sample return

Montage of sample tube on Mars surface
This montage shows tubes containing Martian samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS)

Months after deciding that its previous plan for bringing samples back from Mars wasn’t going to work, NASA says it’s working out the details for two new sample return scenarios, with the aim of bringing 30 titanium tubes filled with Martian rocks and soil back to Earth in the 2030s.

One scenario calls for using a beefed-up version of NASA’s sky crane to drop the required hardware onto the Red Planet’s surface, while the other would use heavy-lift commercial capabilities provided by the likes of SpaceX or Blue Origin.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the space agency plans to flesh out the details for each option over the course of the next year and make its choice in 2026. But that all depends on what Congress and President-elect Donald Trump’s administration want to do.

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Amazon revs up for the internet satellite market

Atlas V launch of prototype Amazon Kuiper satellites in 2023
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket sends two prototype satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper to orbit in 2023. (ULA Photo)

Get ready for Amazon’s Project Kuiper to pick up the pace in the megaconstellation space race.

So far, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite megaconstellation has dominated the market for broadband connectivity from low Earth orbit. In the nearly 10 years since SpaceX founder Elon Musk unveiled the project in Seattle, the Starlink network has attracted more than 5 million subscribers and more than $2 billion in U.S. government contracts (including work on the Starshield national security network).

But the year ahead promises to bring heightened competition: Like Starlink, Project Kuiper aims to offer high-speed internet access from the skies for hundreds of millions of people around the world who are currently underserved.

Following up on last year’s successful test of two prototype satellites, Amazon plans to begin launching operational Kuiper satellites in early 2025, with service due to begin by the end of the year. Pricing details haven’t yet been announced, but Amazon says “affordability is a key principle of Project Kuiper.”

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Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket passes its pre-launch test

New Glenn hotfire test at night
Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket executes a hotfire test on its launch pad. (Blue Origin Photo)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s put its orbital-class New Glenn rocket through its last major test in preparation for its first-ever launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

“All we have left to do is mate our encapsulated payload … and then LAUNCH!” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said in an update posted to the X social-media platform.

Today’s integrated vehicle hotfire test took place just hours after the Federal Aviation Administration issued a five-year license for New Glenn launches and landings. The first launch hasn’t yet been officially scheduled but is likely to take place soon. “We are really close, folks,” Limp said in an earlier update on X.

New Glenn, which is named after the late astronaut and senator John Glenn, has been in the works for more than a decade. The first launch will send up Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder, a demonstrator spacecraft that will test the communications, power and control systems for the company’s Blue Ring space mobility platform.

During today’s pre-launch rehearsal, all seven of New Glenn’s first-stage BE-4 engines fired simultaneously for 24 seconds while the booster was held down on the pad. The engines were brought up to 100% thrust for 13 of those seconds.

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How to tame AI: More regulations, or maybe a boycott?

Gary Marcus and Ted Chiang on stage
Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus, left, chats with science-fiction author Ted Chiang at Town Hall Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Have the risks of artificial intelligence risen to the point where more regulation is needed? Cognitive scientist Gary Marcus argues that the federal government — or maybe even international agencies — will need to step in.

The Food and Drug Administration or the Federal Aviation Administration could provide a model, Marcus said last week during a fireside chat with Seattle science-fiction author Ted Chiang at Town Hall Seattle.

“I think we would like to have something like an FDA-like approval process if somebody introduces a new form of AI that has considerable risks,” Marcus said. “There should be some way of regulating that and saying, ‘Hey, what are the costs? What are the benefits? Do the benefits to society really outweigh the costs?’”

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Cosmic Science

Oops! That’s not Amelia Earhart’s plane — it’s a rock

Airplane-shaped rock formation
A sonar image shows a rock formation previously thought to be the wreckage of Amelia Earhart's airplane. (Credit: Deep Sea Vision)

Once again, a seemingly promising lead in the search for traces of missing aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and her plane has fizzled out.

Hopes of solving the 87-year-old mystery were raised in January when Deep Sea Vision, a team of underwater archaeologists and robotics experts led by former Air Force intelligence officer Tony Romeo, said they captured a fuzzy sonar image that looked like an airplane.

Deep Sea Vision said the find was notable because the shape was detected about 100 miles from Howland Island, in an area of the Pacific Ocean where the team suspected Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, may have gone down during their attempt to fly around the globe in 1937.

“You’d be hard-pressed to convince me that’s anything but an aircraft, for one; and two, that it’s not Amelia’s aircraft,” Romeo said on NBC’s “Today” show when the discovery was announced.

Unfortunately for Romeo and his team, higher-resolution sonar imagery revealed that the shape was merely a natural rock formation lying more than 16,000 feet beneath the ocean surface. The new sonar view was captured this month by an autonomous underwater vehicle.

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Stoke Space CEO blazes a trail to total rocket reusability

Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa in front of propellant tank sections at rocket factory
Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa at the startup’s rocket factory in Kent, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

KENT, Wash. — Like two of the world’s best-known billionaires, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, Stoke Space CEO Andy Lapsa is passionate about making spaceships as reusable as airplanes.

“Part of the big thesis of the company is, how do you build a fully, rapidly reusable space vehicle that goes to space, performs a function, comes back and turns around and flies again,” he says. “That’s not a new vision. We’ve been dreaming about fully reusable spacecraft since the ’50s and ’60s, and probably before that. So the big question is, how do you do it?”

Unlike Bezos or Musk, Lapsa isn’t a billionaire. Instead, he made his case to backers who have billions of dollars to invest. Those backers include Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose investments in Stoke have been made through Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund that focuses on clean-tech innovations for the climate challenge.

Rockets that fight climate change? That’s part of Lapsa’s uncommon perspective on the benefits of reusable rocket ships.

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