Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will have to wait a little longer for the long-anticipated maiden orbital flight of its new rocket after a launch attempt dragged on for hours before being canceled due to unspecified technical issues.
The towering 98m rocket, dubbed New Glenn in honor of legendary astronaut John Glenn, was scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station during a three-hour window starting at 1:00am yesterday, but the countdown repeatedly stalled as teams scrambled to resolve “anomalies,” before the mission was officially “scrubbed” at about 3:10am — a common occurrence in the space industry, but disappointing nonetheless for the hundreds of thousands of people who stayed up to watch the live feed.
“We are standing down today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window,” Blue Origin executive Ariane Cornell said on the Webcast. “We are reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.”
Photo: Reuters
With the mission, dubbed NG-1, billionaire Amazon founder Bezos is taking aim at the only man in the world wealthier than him — Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX dominates the orbital launch market through its prolific Falcon 9 rockets, vital for the commercial sector, the Pentagon and NASA.
Bezos, who founded Blue Origin a quarter-of-a-century ago and celebrated his 61st birthday on Sunday, watched events unfold from the nearby launch control room. Musk, for his part, wished Blue Origin “Good luck” on social media.
“SpaceX has for the past several years been pretty much the only game in town, and so having a competitor ... this is great,” said Scott Hubbard, a retired senior NASA official, who is expecting the competition to drive down costs.
SpaceX is planning the next orbital test of Starship — its gargantuan rocket — this week, upping the high-stakes rivalry.
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