The initial launch of New Glenn, Blue Origin’s inaugural orbital rocket, was halted on early Monday due to an anomaly with the vehicle’s subsystems.
Regular attempts to launch in the world of spaceflight are often delayed and this apparent setback once again injects uncertainty in New Glenn’s expected take-off. Sources indicate that given the depth of the countdown reached, it would most likely take Blue Origin a minimum of 48 hours to initiate the launch after resetting the rocket.
Complicating the scenario, this week’s rising tumultuous conditions in the Atlantic may hobble Blue Origin’s plans to recover New Glenn’s booster safely on a drone ship — a recovery method akin to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets.
The successful commissioning of the New Glenn caricatures a crucial milepost for Blue Origin, given that the heavy-lift market is currently under the aegis of SpaceX. The company, Blue Origin, until now, has primarily occupied itself with launching tourists and performing scientific sub-orbital experiments via its smaller rocket, the New Shepard. However, New Glenn envelops the promise of revolutionizing their business capital, underpinning their agreements to dispatch payloads for NASA, Space Force, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, among others.
On January 9, the immense 320-foot rocket was poised at Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a launch scheduled for January 12. However, the fixed date was subsequently postponed for a day to bolster the chance of a successful booster landing.
The launch window of three hours for New Glenn kick-started at 1a.m. ET, on January 13. Although the rocket was fuelled, trouble arose in an obscure subsystem which caused a further delay in the launch (supposedly a clogged ice line.). As per Blue Origin’s comments, the main objective of the first New Glenn’s launch is a safe orbit reach whereas anything extra would be a bonus. If successful in orbit, the rocket will bear a prototype of the Blue Ring spacecraft, the building blocks of a more extensive space-based economy.
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