Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin aborts debut launch of massive new rocket due to last-minute glitch

The 320-ft New Glenn rocket was supposed to blast off before dawn, but launch controllers had to deal with an unspecified rocket issue in the final minutes of the countdown

Cape Canaveral: Blue Origin called off the debut launch of its massive new rocket early on Monday because of technical trouble.

The 320-ft New Glenn rocket was supposed to blast off before dawn with a prototype satellite from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. But launch controllers had to deal with an unspecified rocket issue in the final minutes of the countdown and ran out of time.

Once the countdown clock was halted, they immediately began draining 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 problem.

The test flight already had been delayed by rough seas that posed a risk to the company’s plan to land the first-stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic.

New Glenn is named after the first American to orbit Earth, John Glenn. It is five times taller than Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket that 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 80 km east of Orlando, Florida.

No matter what happens, Bezos said on Sunday evening, “We’re going to pick ourselves up and keep going.”