Blue Origin abandons Monday’s effort to launch New Glenn rocket

Blue Origin has scrubbed Monday’s highly anticipated launch attempt of its New Glenn rocket.

With just 13 minutes remaining on the countdown clock at Cape Canaveral in Florida early on Monday morning, the decision was taken to stand down to give engineers a chance to troubleshoot “a vehicle subsystem issue.”

The three-hour launch window opened at 1 a.m. ET, but after pausing and restarting the clock multiple times over the next couple of hours, the decision was finally taken to suspend launch operations at around 3 a.m. ET. A new schedule has yet to be set.

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The NG-1 mission will carry the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload, which will test key technologies for the upcoming Blue Ring spacecraft. The payload’s communications array, power system, and flight computer will be evaluated during a six-hour operational phase and remain attached to the rocket’s second stage throughout.

Blue Origin is also planning to land the first stage of the New Glenn on a platform floating in the sea off the coast of Florida, similar to how SpaceX lands its dependable Falcon 9 booster. Such landings enable the boosters to be used again, helping to drastically reduce launch costs.

The NG-1 mission is a huge event for Blue Origin, as up until now it has only performed launches of its much less powerful sub-orbital, single-stage New Shepard rocket, which is mainly used for short tourism rides to the edge of space.

The long-term goal of the Washington-based spaceflight company founded by Jeff Bezos is to compete with SpaceX in the lucrative satellite launch market. It’s also working on a lunar lander and has plans to put a commercial space station in Earth orbit.