Blue Origin abandons Monday’s effort to launch New Glenn rocket

Blue Origin had to cancel Monday’s highly anticipated launch attempt of its New Glenn rocket.

With only 13 minutes left on the countdown clock at Cape Canaveral in Florida early on Monday morning, engineers decided to stand down to address “a vehicle subsystem issue.”

The three-hour launch window opened at 1 a.m. ET, but after pausing and restarting the clock multiple times over the next couple of hours, launch operations were finally suspended around 3 a.m. ET. A new schedule has not been set yet.

The NG-1 mission will carry the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload, which will test crucial technologies for the upcoming Blue Ring spacecraft. The payload’s communications array, power system, and flight computer will be evaluated during a six-hour operational phase and will remain attached to the rocket’s second stage throughout.

Blue Origin also plans to land the first stage of the New Glenn on a platform floating in the sea off the coast of Florida, similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster landings. These landings allow the boosters to be reused, leading to significant cost reductions for launches.

The NG-1 mission is a significant milestone for Blue Origin, as it has previously only launched its less powerful sub-orbital, single-stage New Shepard rocket, primarily for short tourism trips to the edge of space.

The long-term objective of the Washington-based company, founded by Jeff Bezos, is to compete with SpaceX in the lucrative satellite launch market. It is also working on a lunar lander and has plans to establish a commercial space station in Earth’s orbit.