Lightning never strikes the same place twice, they say. Well, maybe it does, because two individual launches by SpaceX and Blue Origin have been cancelled twice in one week. A total of four rocket launches were scheduled to take place on Tuesday (December 18). Sadly, two of the four were cancelled because of technical difficulties. SpaceX said that its rocket shot up an abort alert because of a sensor issue and Blue Origin cited a “ground infrastructure issue” as its reason for the delay.
SpaceX, which seemed ready for its launch around the same time on Wednesday (December 19), backed out once more, saying on Twitter “Standing down from today’s launch attempt of GPS III SV01 to further evaluate out of family reading on first stage sensors; will confirm a new launch date once complete.” In a later tweet, the Elon Musk-owned company said that it was working towards a Thursday launch (December 20) and that weather still remained a challenge.
Blue Origin—the Jeff Bezos-owned private aerospace manufacturer—originally rescheduled its rocket launch for Friday (December 21) but found itself still grappling with ground infrastructure issues, along with other problems in “additional systems”. And so, the company decided to launch the rocket in early 2019. The company has announced no specific date yet.
If all goes well, we should see a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket shoot out of our skies later this afternoon and a Blue Origin rocket emerge from the planet’s atmosphere early next year. Blue Origin’s rocket is named New Shepard (after Alan Shephard, the first American to go to space). It is, according to the company, a fully reusable, vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) space vehicle with space on-board for six astronauts.
Team is working toward launch of GPS III SV01 tomorrow, December 20. Weather remains a challenge; currently forecasted at 20% favorable during the 26-minute launch window which opens at 9:03 a.m. EST, 14:03 UTC.
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) 20 December 2018
Through fixing the ground infrastructure issue, we have determined additional systems need to be addressed. We have changed our target to early 2019 for next launch attempt. Stay tuned for updates #NS10
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) 20 December 2018