{"id":43613,"date":"2025-11-14T01:59:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T17:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/an-explosion-92-million-miles-away-just-grounded-jeff-bezos-new-glenn-rocket-3\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T01:59:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T17:59:16","slug":"an-explosion-92-million-miles-away-just-grounded-jeff-bezos-new-glenn-rocket-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/an-explosion-92-million-miles-away-just-grounded-jeff-bezos-new-glenn-rocket-3\/","title":{"rendered":"An explosion 92 million miles away just grounded Jeff Bezos\u2019 New Glenn rocket"},"content":{"rendered":"

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida\u2014The second flight of Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket was postponed again Wednesday as a supercharged wave of magnetized plasma from the Sun enveloped the Earth, triggering colorful auroral displays and concerns over possible impacts to communications, navigation, and power grids.<\/p>\n

Solar storms like the one this week can also affect satellite operations. That is the worry that caused NASA to hold off on launching a pair of science probes from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, on Wednesday aboard Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Blue Origin said NASA, its customer on the upcoming launch, decided to postpone the mission to send the agency\u2019s two ESCAPADE spacecraft on a journey to Mars.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew Glenn is ready to launch,\u201d Blue Origin wrote on X. \u201cHowever, due to highly elevated solar activity and its potential effects on the ESCAPADE spacecraft, NASA is postponing launch until space weather conditions improve. We are currently assessing opportunities to establish our next launch window based on forecasted space weather and range availability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blue Origin is the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. The heavy-lift New Glenn rocket is set to lift off on its second flight, and Blue Origin will attempt to recover the rocket\u2019s reusable first stage booster on a landing platform in the Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Blue Origin<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

This doesn\u2019t happen often<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s unusual, but not unprecedented, for officials to postpone a rocket launch due to space weather. The launch of an Antares cargo rocket heading to the International Space Station was delayed one day in 2014 because of heightened solar activity. SpaceX held up the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket for several hours in 2023 to wait for space radiation levels to abate. This followed the loss of nearly 40 Starlink Internet satellites in 2022 as a geomagnetic storm caused the temporary expansion of Earth\u2019s atmosphere, subjecting the low-altitude satellites to air resistance that pulled them out of orbit.<\/p>\n

Atmospheric drag is not the concern with the launch of NASA\u2019s ESCAPADE mission because the satellites are heading into deep space. Instead, there is a risk that high-energy particles coming from the Sun might interfere with electronic systems on the twin probes. The ESCAPADE mission itself is designed to study the interaction between the solar wind and the upper atmosphere of Mars.<\/p>\n

Blue Origin did not immediately set a new target launch date for the ESCAPADE mission. Several launches are already scheduled to depart from Cape Canaveral in the next few days, including United Launch Alliance\u2019s Atlas V rocket and a pair of SpaceX Falcon 9s. If those schedules hold, the next opening for New Glenn and ESCAPADE may not come until the weekend.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

A series of eruptions from the Sun, known as coronal mass ejections, sparked dazzling auroral light shows Tuesday night. The eruptions sent a blast of material from the Sun, including charged particles with a strong localized magnetic field, toward the Earth at more than 1 million mph, or more than 500 kilometers per second.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A solar ultraviolet imager on one of NOAA\u2019s GOES weather satellites captured this view of a coronal mass ejection from the Sun early Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n NOAA<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Satellites detected the most recent strong coronal mass ejection, accompanied by a bright solar flare, early Tuesday. It was expected to arrive at Earth on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already had two of three anticipated coronal mass ejections arrive here at Earth,\u201d said Shawn Dahl, a forecaster at NOAA\u2019s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado. The first two waves \u201cpacked quite a punch,\u201d Dahl said, and were \u201cprofoundly stronger than we anticipated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The storm sparked northern lights that were visible as far south as Texas, Florida, and Mexico on Tuesday night. Another round of northern lights might be visible Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

The storm arriving Wednesday was the \u201cmost energetic\u201d of all the recent coronal mass ejections, Dahl said. It\u2019s also traveling at higher speed, fast enough to cover the 92 million-mile gulf between the Sun and the Earth in less than two days. Forecasters predict a G4 level, or severe, geomagnetic storm Wednesday into Thursday, with a slight chance of a rarer extreme G5 storm, something that has only happened once in the last two decades.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Aurora Borealis lights up the night sky over Monroe, Wisconsin, on November 11, 2025, during one of the strongest solar storms in decades.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n Ross Harried\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The sudden arrival of a rush of charged particles from the Sun can create disturbances in Earth\u2019s magnetic field, affecting power grids, degrading GPS navigation signals, and disrupting radio communications. A G4 geomagnetic storm can trigger \u201cpossible widespread voltage control problems\u201d in terrestrial electrical networks, according to NOAA, along with potential surface charging problems on satellites flying above the protective layers of the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not easy to predict the precise impacts of a geomagnetic storm until it arrives on Earth\u2019s doorstep. Several satellites positioned a million miles from Earth in the direction of the Sun carry sensors to detect the speed of the solar wind, its charge, and the direction of its magnetic field. This information helps forecasters know what to expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese types of storms can be very variable,\u201d Dahl said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida\u2014The second flight of Blue Origin\u2019s New Glenn rocket was postponed again Wednesday as a supercharged wave of magnetized plasma from the Sun enveloped the Earth, triggering colorful auroral displays and concerns over possible impacts to communications, navigation, and power grids. Solar storms like the one this week can also affect satellite operations. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}