Blue Origin stands down from New Glenn launch attempt — again
By Jackie Wattles, CNN
(CNN) — Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos in 2000, has called off a second attempt to launch its 30-story New Glenn rocket.
The vehicle had been slated to get off the ground early Monday, but the company waved off that plan so engineers could work to address a technical issue with the vehicle.
By Monday evening, after roughly 16 hours with no update and no word on what exactly that problem was — Blue Origin took to social media to declare it could make a second attempt during a three-hour launch window that opens at 1 a.m. ET Tuesday.
Just a couple of hours later, however, Blue Origin revealed it would not try for the overnight liftoff after all.
“We’re moving our NG-1 launch to no earlier than Thursday, January 16,” the company said in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
That day, Blue Origin will have the same three-hour, early-morning launch window from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. ET.
The company did not immediately say why it reversed course on plans to attempt a New Glenn launch Tuesday morning. But Blue Origin had cautioned earlier that unfavorable weather conditions at the takeoff site may lead to another scrub.
“Tonight’s poor weather forecast at LC-36 could result in missing this window,” the company said in a Monday evening post.
Troubleshooting ‘anomalies’
In the dispatch, Blue Origin also disclosed more detail on the problem engineers had sought to fix during the last attempt.
“This morning’s scrub was due to ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit that powers some of our hydraulic systems,” the company said.
A “purge line” is a pipe or tube that can be used to flush out any unwanted gases or debris from a rocket system.
That detail was more than Blue Origin offered during its webcast of Monday’s launch attempt. At the time, the company revealed only that engineers were grappling with “anomalies,” which is aerospace parlance for issues with the rocket that must be fixed before giving the final green light for takeoff.
“We are standing down from today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue” said Ariane Cornell, Blue Origin’s vice president of in-space systems.
At one point Monday morning, the countdown clock crept down to show less than 10 minutes before liftoff, but Blue Origin periodically added more time as engineers worked to troubleshoot outstanding issues. Ultimately, the problems were not resolved with ample time before the launch window was set to close at 4 a.m. ET.
A smooth inaugural liftoff for New Glenn could be crucial, as the company is hoping to gather copious data from this flight and pave the way for the rocket to quickly make an impact on the global launch industry. New Glenn is the first rocket developed by Blue Origin that aims to be capable of sending satellites to orbit — a feat that will be necessary for any company hoping to challenge SpaceX’s long-held dominance in the launch market.
Blue Origin waved off the New Glenn launch heading into a busy week for spaceflight. Notably, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying two lunar landers is set to take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center — which lies adjacent to Cape Canaveral — as soon as Wednesday at 1:11 a.m. ET. SpaceX is also due to kick off the seventh test flight of its gargantuan Starship rocket on Wednesday.
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