Blue Origin Aborts Launch Of 30-Story New Glenn Rocket Minutes Before Liftoff

If things had gone to plan in the wee hours of the morning today, Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin team would be celebrating the successful liftoff of the company's towering New Glenn rocket. Instead, celebrations will have to wait for another day after pesky issues ultimately kept the 30-story rocket grounded at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

In the lead-up to the launch event, Blue Origin announced that there would be a three-hour launch window beginning today (Monday) at 1:00 a.m. EST. However, the Blue Origin team identified multiple show-stopping anomalies that ultimately led to the decision to stand down.

"We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We’re reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt," Blue Origin said in a statement.

Blue Ring Pathfinder payload for New Glenn's first mission, NG-1

At one point, a countdown clock showed just minutes remaining before liftoff. However, Blue Origin's engineers kept adding more time to try and work out pre-launch kinks that crept up. When it became clear that the issues couldn't be resolved before the 4:00 a.m. EST time limit, Blue Origin decided to scrub the mission.

New Glenn, which is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, is described as the company's "giant reusable rocket built for bigger things." According to Blue Origin, the first stage is designed for a minimum of 25 flights and operates like a commercial airliner, but with cleaner fuel.

"New Glenn will launch payloads into high-energy orbits. It can carry more than 13 metric tons to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) and 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit (LEO)," Blue Origin states.

Blue Origin's goal with the eventual inaugural New Glenn rocket liftoff is to reach orbit safely. The company acknowledges that it's "ambitious" to land the and the booster on the first try offshore in the Atlantic, "but we're going for it."

During the livestream, Blue Origin vice president of in-space systems, Ariane Cornell, said the team has now shifted focus to "de-tank" and "assess what other things we want to get done on our downtime." A new launch date has not yet been announced.

Images courtesy of Blue Origin