Blue Origin, the aerospace venture founded by Jeff Bezos, encountered yet another hurdle in developing its flagship rocket, New Glenn. Scheduled to launch on Monday morning from Cape Canaveral, the mission was abruptly scrubbed just before liftoff.
The towering 320-foot New Glenn rocket was poised for its inaugural flight within a three-hour launch window before dawn. However, as the countdown proceeded, Blue Origin made several attempts to resolve technical issues before ultimately calling off the mission at 3:05 a.m. “We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window,” the company shared on X, formerly Twitter.
The specific subsystem issue remains undisclosed, leaving engineers to promptly begin draining the rocket’s fuel and assess the next steps.
Dubbed NG-1, this mission holds particular significance for Blue Origin. It represents the company’s first orbital flight and marks a shift beyond their well-known suborbital space tourist flights with the New Shepard spacecraft. The NG-1 mission includes a critical test of New Glenn’s payload capacity, as it carries the Blue Ring Pathfinder, a prototype device designed to evaluate Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft platform. This platform aims to support future space missions with capabilities such as refueling, communication, and transportation.
In an ambitious bid to rival SpaceX’s recovery techniques, Blue Origin plans to recover New Glenn’s first stage booster—fittingly nicknamed “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance”—by landing it on a drone ship, the Jacklyn. This marks a strategic move to advance reusable rocket technology and reduce launch costs.
New Glenn’s development, spanning over a decade, has been fraught with setbacks. The NG-1 mission, initially scheduled for the previous week, faced immediate delays. In the past year, a critical part of the rocket’s upper stage exploded during a stress test, while another component suffered damage during transportation.
These issues have also impacted collaborative missions. NASA had originally planned to use New Glenn for its ESCAPADE Mars probes, but delays forced a rescheduling of the mission, highlighting the rocket’s slow progress.