Bezos’ New Glenn Rocket Launch Postponed
Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, had to cancel the first launch of its new rocket early Monday due to an unspecified anomaly.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin postponed the inaugural launch of its New Glenn rocket early Monday because of a technical issue that was not specified.
The 320-foot rocket—named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth—was scheduled to lift off at 1:30 a.m. ET from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
However, the launch was delayed multiple times, and the final attempt at 3:15 a.m. was aborted.
The rocket, carrying a prototype spacecraft, remained in place as the fuel was drained to prevent any accidents.
Blue Origin, established by Amazon.com Inc. owner Bezos 25 years ago, mentioned that the team needed more time to resolve the issue.
Before the launch was called off, Bezos stated, “We’re going to pick ourselves up and keep going” in case of any problems.
Bezos spent the night at Mission Control located at the rocket factory near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, preparing for the launch.
The plan was for New Glenn to launch, with its reusable first stage booster landing on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after liftoff, while the second stage continued into orbit.
The test flight had already been delayed due to rough seas that posed a risk to the floating platform in the Atlantic.
New Glenn was set to carry the first prototype of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring vehicle, intended to service satellites in orbit for Pentagon and commercial customers.
Bezos: ‘Anything Could Happen’
Earlier on Sunday, Bezos mentioned, “The thing we’re most nervous about is the booster landing. Clearly on a first flight you could have an anomaly at any mission phase, so anything could happen.”
Bezos has been aiming for New Glenn to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the satellite market.
The development of New Glenn has taken years, with Bezos recently appointing Dave Limp as CEO to accelerate success and compete with SpaceX.
New Glenn is more powerful than Falcon 9, with numerous launch contracts worth billions of dollars lined up.
During the night, Blue Origin stated on X: “Our key objective today is to reach orbit safely. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake. We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious, but we’re going for it. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”
On Sunday, Bezos expressed optimism about Blue Origin’s future and downplayed concerns about Musk’s influence on the space agenda.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
