Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket was due launch orbit for the first time today – but the launch was cancelled after several delays.
Jeff Bezos‘ rocket was set to take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida in the early hours of Monday morning, in what has been seen as a challenge to Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX. However, following several delays to the launch time as safety and weather checks were being carried out, the mission was cancelled.
Blue Origin said it needed more time to “troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue” that would take them beyond their launch window. A new date will be set, Blue Origin said, urging people to follow their social media channels to know when that will be.
A spokeswoman for the company explained on the launch livestream: “When we know when the next opportunity is of course we will let everybody know.” She added the launch team will not “detank” the vehicle and then “assess what other things we might want to get done in our downtime and that is what’s going to guide when the next launch opportunity will be.”
The aerospace engineering company wrote on X, formerly called Twitter: “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.”
This was set to be the rocket’s first flight, with Blue Origin saying it had “prepared rigorously” for it. The company had tweeted: “We want to be clear about our objectives. This is our first flight and we’ve prepared rigorously for it. But no amount of ground testing or mission simulations is a replacement for flying this rocket.
“Our key objective today is to reach orbit safely. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake. We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious – but we’re going for it. No matter what happens, we’ll learn, refine, and apply that knowledge to our next launch.”
The New Glenn rocket is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, who is regarded as a national hero. According to the Blue Origin website, the New Glenn is a “giant, reusable rocket” that is engineered with the safety required to fly human. In its first phase, the rocket is designed for a minimum of 25 flights and claims it will lead to “significantly less waste and cost” as it uses cleaner fuel.
Once New Glenn is high in the air and the first stage has used all of its fuel, it will drop away from the rest of the rocket and be brought back to Earth. The Blue Origin team will then attempt to land the rocket on a platform on the sea called Jacklyn, which is ready to be reused.
Then, when New Glenn is back in the air, the second stage will kick in, powered by two restartable engines using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. This stage will allow the rest of the rocket to get where it needs to be in orbit, including the Blue Ring Pathfinder.
Mr Bezos, who is the founder of Amazon, has joined a number of other tech entrepreneurs in what has been dubbed as the billionaire space race. He previously said he aimed to “build a road to space so our kids and their kids can build the future” as he added: “We need to do that to solve the problems here on Earth.”
His company Blue Origin says it was founded “with a vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth.” But the space race is seen as a “waste of money” by critics who believe the cash should be spent on the climate crisis instead.
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