Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin canceled the launch of its New Glenn rocket on Monday after “some anomalies” during the mission countdown, undermining its inaugural effort to reach orbit and compete with SpaceX in the satellite launch market. Postponed for at least a day.
The 30-story tall, partially reusable New Glenn launcher sat on Blue Origin’s launchpad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, ready for liftoff after being loaded with methane and liquid oxygen initially scheduled for 1:00 p.m. ET. (0600 GMT). propellant.
But late in the countdown, Blue Origin repeatedly pushed back the liftoff time, putting 4 a.m. near the end of New Glenn’s launch window. A spokesperson said on the company’s live feed that mission teams were investigating “some anomalies.”
“We are continuing today’s launch effort to troubleshoot vehicle subsystem issues that will take us beyond our launch window,” Blue Origin said in a statement. “We are reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.”
The delay could be as little as 24 hours, but is likely to last longer as the company investigates the disruptions to the high-risk, high-risk mission.
The culmination of a decade-long, multi-billion-dollar development journey, the flight, whenever it does fly, will include an attempt to land New Glenn’s first stage booster on a sea-fairing barge in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after liftoff . While the second stage of the rocket continues towards orbit.
“The thing we’re most nervous about is the booster landing,” Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, told Reuters in a pre-launch interview. “Obviously there could be an anomaly at any mission stage on the first flight, so anything could happen.”
Secure inside New Glenn’s payload bay is the first prototype of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring vehicle, a maneuverable spacecraft that the company plans to sell to the Pentagon and commercial customers for national security and satellite servicing missions.
Delivering the spacecraft to its intended orbit on the inaugural rocket launch will be a rare feat for a space company.
“If we could do that, it would be a major breakthrough,” Bezos said. “Landing the booster will be icing on the cake.”
New Glenn’s development involved three Blue Origin CEOs and faced numerous delays as Elon Musk’s SpaceX grew into an industry giant with its reusable Falcon 9, the world’s most active rocket.
In late 2023, Bezos accelerated things at Blue Origin by prioritizing development of the New Glenn and its BE-4 engine. He named Amazon veteran Dave Limp as CEO, who employees say brought a sense of urgency to compete with SpaceX.
The New Glenn is more than twice as powerful as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and has dozens of customer launch contracts collectively worth billions of dollars.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
