Rocket Report: Starship pops on purpose, Delta IV Heavy ready to try again

Enlarge / Firefly tests the first stage of its Alpha rocket. (credit: Firefly Aerospace)

Welcome to Edition 3.17 of the Rocket Report! Weather and technical issues permitting, we're looking at a busy weekend in Florida, with a Delta IV Heavy booster set for liftoff early on Saturday, followed by a Falcon 9 launch on Sunday morning. In the meantime, catch up on all the booster news below.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

New Shepard scrubs launch attempt. On Thursday, Blue Origin scrubbed the first launch attempt of its first New Shepard rocket since December 2019. The mission was due to fly several commercial payloads and some lunar landing technology for NASA. "We've detected a potential issue with the power supply to the experiments," Blue Origin stated. The company added that it would try to launch again on Friday, September 24, at 15:00 UTC.

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