Bad Weather Delays Blue Origin Launch of Reusable New Shepard Spacecraft – Space.com

Blue Origin will have to wait at least one more day to fly its first space mission in seven months after bad weather delayed a launch attempt today (Dec. 10).

The private spaceflight company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos hoped to launch a suborbital New Shepard spacecraft from a West Texas test site at 11:30 a.m. EST (1630 GMT), but was forced to stand down due to unacceptable weather conditions.

"We are scrubbing today's New Shepard launch due to weather conditions," Blue Origin wrote in a Twitter status update. "Our next launch attempt will be tomorrow morning, Wed. Dec. 11." An exact launch time has not yet been released.

You'll be able to watch the New Shepard launch on Space.com, courtesy of the Blue Origin, beginning about 30 minutes before liftoff. You can also watch the launch directly from Blue Origin's website here.

Related: How Blue Origin's New Shepard Rocket Ride Works (Infographic)

New Shepard is a reusable space capsule and rocket designed to take science payloads, and eventually paying passengers on suborbital trips to space. The New Shepard vehicle can make a vertical landing after launching its capsule into space. The capsule, meanwhile, returns to Earth using parachutes. It's been seven months since Blue Origin's last launch in May.

The vehicle flying the NS-12 mission will be make its sixth spaceflight when it flies. The mission is Blue Origin's ninth commercial launch and includes the 100th commercial payload among experiments for customers, universities and NASA.

Packed among those payloads is a NASA space trash recycling experiment called OSCAR (after the trash-loving Oscar the Grouch on "Sesame Street"); a Columbia University student experiment to study the effects of weightlessness on cell biology; and a NASA "space plant" experiment to study gene expression in microgravity.

Related: Art in Space Contest: A Conversation with OK Go's Damian Kulash

The spacecraft is also carrying two art experiments for the winners of the Art in Space Contest by the rock band OK Go, which challenged middle and high school students to come up with an intriguing space art payload for a Blue Origin flight.

Thousands of postcards written and decorated by children from Blue Origin's nonprofit Club for the Future, which seeks to inspire kids in space exploration, are also launching on this mission, Blue Origin has said.

Email Tariq Malik attmalik@space.comor follow him@tariqjmalik. Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.

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Bad Weather Delays Blue Origin Launch of Reusable New Shepard Spacecraft - Space.com