Blue Origin’s third manned space flight, the first with 6 people on board.
- Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin canceled the launch of its New Glenn rocket on Monday during the mission countdown, postponing by at least a day an inaugural attempt to reach orbit and compete with SpaceX in the rocket launch market. satellites.
- Blue Origin released a statement explaining that they decided not to launch as planned “to resolve a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window.”
- New Glenn is carrying 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 maintenance missions.
The blue origin of Jeff Bezos On Monday, the launch of its New Glenn rocket was canceled after “a few anomalies” during the mission’s countdown, postponing by at least a day an inaugural attempt to reach orbit and compete with SpaceX in the launch market. satellites.
Standing 30 stories tall, the partially reusable New Glenn launcher sat on Blue Origin’s launch pad at the Cape Canaveral space station, ready for a liftoff originally scheduled for 1 a.m. ET (0600 GMT) after having been loaded with methane and liquid oxygen. thrusters.
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But late in the countdown, Blue Origin repeatedly pushed back the liftoff time, moving closer to the end of New Glenn’s 4 a.m. launch window. A live company spokeswoman said mission teams were looking into “a few anomalies.”
“We are abandoning today’s launch attempt to resolve a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window,” Blue Origin said in a statement. “We are looking at opportunities for our next launch attempt.”
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket stands ready during its launch attempt, which was later delayed by at least 24 hours, at the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 13, 2025. (Reuters/Steve Nesius)
The delay could be at least 24 hours, but will likely last longer as the company examines the issues surrounding this high-risk, high-stakes mission.
The culmination of a decade-long, multibillion-dollar development journey, the flight, each time it takes off, will include an attempt to land from New Glenn’s first stage on a sea fairing barge in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after liftoff, while the rocket’s second stage continues toward orbit.
“What worries us most is the bump landing,” said Bezos, founder of Blue origin in 2000, told Reuters in a pre-launch interview. “It’s clear that on a first flight you could have an anomaly at any phase of the mission, so anything can happen.”
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 maintenance missions, is secured inside the cargo bay of New Glenn.
A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket is ready for its maiden launch to the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 11, 2025. (Reuters/Joe Skipper/File photo / Reuters)
Getting the spacecraft into its intended orbit in a maiden rocket launch would be a rare achievement for a space company.
“If we could do that, it would be a great success,” Bezos said. “Landing on the booster would be the icing on the cake.”
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Development of New Glenn required three Blue Origin CEOs and faced numerous delays as Elon Musk’s SpaceX became an industry heavyweight with its reusable Falcon 9, the world’s most active rocket.
Bezos decided at the end of 2023 to accelerate things at Blue Origin, by prioritizing the development of New Glenn and its BE-4 engines. He named Dave Limp, an Amazon veteran, as CEO, which employees said created a sense of urgency. compete with SpaceX.
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.
