Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space company is canceling the debut launch of a new rocket
Blue Origin canceled the debut launch of its massive new rocket early Monday due to technical issues.
The 98-meter New Glenn rocket was scheduled to lift off before dawn with a prototype satellite from the Cape Canaveral Space Station in Florida. But launch controllers had to deal with an unspecified rocket problem in the final minutes of the countdown and time ran out. After the countdown clock was stopped, they immediately began to release all the fuel from the rocket.
Blue Origin did not immediately set a new launch date, saying the team needed more time to resolve the issue.
The test flight had already been delayed by rough seas that posed a risk to the company’s plan to land the booster’s first stage on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
New Glenn was named after the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn. It’s five times taller than Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which carries paying customers to the edge of space from Texas.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos founded the company 25 years ago. He took part in Monday’s countdown from Mission Control, located at the rocket factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, about 50 miles east of Orlando, Florida.
No matter what happens, Bezos said Sunday night, “we’re going to pick ourselves up and keep going.”
