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Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, has called off its first attempt to get its new, 30-story New Glenn rocket off the ground.
The company had been set to ignite the rocket during a three-hour launch window that opened Monday at 1 a.m. ET from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
But during a livestream of the event, the company revealed that engineers were grappling with “anomalies,” which is aerospace parlance for issues with the rocket that must be fixed before giving the final green light for takeoff.
The company did not immediately share what exactly the problems were that engineers were seeking to remedy.
“We are standing down from today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue” said Ariane Cornell, Blue Origin’s vice president of in-space systems.
It’s also unclear when Blue Origin may make another launch attempt. Cornell said the next step is to drain the New Glenn rocket of its fuel. The company began filling the vehicle’s fuel tanks with propellant — including liquid methane, hydrogen and oxygen — late Sunday evening.
“From there, we’re going to assess … what are the things we might want to get done in our downtime? And that is what’s going to guide when the next launch opportunity will be,” Cornell said.
At one point Monday morning, the countdown clock crept down to show less than 10 minutes before liftoff, but Blue Origin routinely added more time as engineers worked to troubleshoot outstanding issues. Ultimately, the problems were not resolved with ample time before the launch window was set to close at 4 a.m. ET.
A smooth inaugural liftoff for New Glenn could be crucial, as the company is hoping to gather copious data from this flight and pave the way for the rocket to quickly make an impact on the global launch industry. New Glenn is the first rocket developed by Blue Origin that aims to be capable of sending satellites to orbit — a feat that will be necessary for any company hoping to challenge SpaceX’s long-held dominance in the launch market.
Blue Origin waved off the New Glenn launch heading into a busy week for spaceflight. Notably, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying two lunar landers is set to take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center — which lies adjacent to Cape Canaveral — as soon as Wednesday at 1:11 a.m. ET. SpaceX is also due to kick off the seventh test flight of its gargantuan Starship rocket on Wednesday.
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