CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA (Reuters) – American company Blue Origin, founded by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, canceled the launch of its New Glenn rocket after “a few anomalies” during the mission’s countdown on Monday, postponing ‘at least one day an inaugural attempt to reach orbit and compete with SpaceX in the satellite launch market.
Measuring 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 initially scheduled for 1 a.m. ET (0600 GMT) after being fueled with methane and liquid oxygen propellants.
But in the final moments of the countdown, Blue Origin repeatedly pushed back the liftoff time, moving closer to the end of New Glenn’s launch window at 4:00 a.m. ET. A company spokesperson indicated live that the mission teams were examining “a few anomalies”.
“We are interrupting today’s launch attempt in order to resolve a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window,” Blue Origin finally said in a statement. “We are investigating the possibilities for our next launch attempt.”
The delay could be at least 24 hours, but is likely to be longer as the company considers the issue for this high-risk, high-stakes mission.
The culmination of a decade of development and a multibillion-dollar investment, the flight, if it takes place, will include an attempted landing of New Glenn’s first stage on an Atlantic Ocean barge 10 minutes after liftoff, while the second stage of the rocket continues its journey towards orbit.
“What worries us most is the landing of the booster,” Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, said in an interview with Reuters before the launch.
-“It is clear that during a first flight, an anomaly can occur at any phase of the mission, so anything can happen,” he added.
In New Glenn’s cargo 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.
Getting the spacecraft into the intended orbit in a first rocket launch would be a rare feat for a space company.
“If we succeed, it will be a great success,” added Jeff Bezos. “The booster landing would be the icing on the cake.”
New Glenn is more than twice as powerful as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and has already garnered dozens of launch contracts, worth a total of several billion dollars.
(Joey Roulette report, French version Elena Smirnova, edited by Augustin Turpin and Blandine Hénault)
