Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, postponed the inaugural launch of its first orbital rocket, New Glenn, early Monday morning due to an unspecified issue with one of the vehicle’s subsystems. While delays are common in spaceflight, this particular postponement raises questions about the timing of the much-anticipated launch.
According to Eric Berger at Ars Technica, the company progressed far enough into the countdown that Blue Origin would likely need at least 48 hours to reset the rocket for another launch attempt.
Additionally, conditions in the Atlantic Ocean are expected to worsen this week. Blue Origin plans to land New Glenn’s booster on a drone ship, similar to how Elon Musk’s SpaceX often recovers the core of its Falcon 9 rockets. Adverse weather could further complicate these plans.
The success of New Glenn is crucial for Blue Origin as the company aims to enter the heavy-lift market, which is currently dominated by SpaceX. Until now, Blue Origin has primarily focused on launching tourists and science experiments to sub-orbital space using its much smaller New Shepard rocket. New Glenn is expected to open new business opportunities for Blue Origin, which already has contracts to deliver payloads to space for NASA, the Space Force, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and more.
Blue Origin has been preparing to launch New Glenn for several weeks and finally rolled the 320-foot-tall rocket out to its launchpad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 9. At that point, the company was targeting a launch on January 12. However, over the weekend, the company pushed that target date back by one day to increase the odds of successfully landing New Glenn’s booster.
New Glenn’s three-hour launch window began at 1 a.m. ET on January 13. The company loaded propellant into the rocket but encountered an issue with an unspecified subsystem. They attempted to troubleshoot the problem, which reportedly involved ice clogging a line that helps vent gas away from the rocket, before ultimately calling off the launch.
Blue Origin has stated that the primary goal for New Glenn’s first launch is to “reach orbit safely,” and that anything beyond that “is icing on the cake.” Should New Glenn reach orbit, the rocket will be carrying a demonstrator of its Blue Ring spacecraft, which the company intends to use as a building block for a larger space-based economy.
