Blue Origin will have to wait a little longer before competing with SpaceX. Monday January 13, a little after 9 a.m. (3 a.m. local), the company of Jeff Besoz, the wealthy founder of Amazon, announced the postponement of the first takeoff of its giant New Glenn rocket, which was to make its first flight in orbit this Monday morning, departing from the Cape Canaveral base in Florida.
“We have canceled today’s planned launch to resolve a vehicle subsystem issue that would cause us to exceed our launch windowthe company wrote on X. We are studying the possibilities of our next launch attempt.”
Initially scheduled for Friday, the takeoff of this 98-meter machine had already had to be postponed due to bad weather conditions. On Monday, at the Cape Canaveral space station, a three-hour firing window opened at 1 local time. A new launch cannot be organized before Tuesday at the same time, during the next window.
The company has already been taking tourists into space for several years, with its New Shepard rocket, but for only a few minutes. With New Glenn, much more powerful, it aims to enter a new market, that of launching heavy commercial and military satellites and sending ships to the Moon or even Mars.
Blue Origin has already signed contracts with several customers, including the US space agency for an unmanned mission to Mars, and the US government for national security missions. On the commercial side, it plans to deploy internet satellites for several companies. It should also, like SpaceX with Starlink, be responsible for launching satellites from the Amazon group.
