Blue Origin gives up on New Glenn lift-off, 2 hours into launch window

Updated Blue Origin has given up on today's lift-off attempt for its New Glenn rocket, confirming that it was standing down a little more than two hours into the vehicle's launch window.

Rocket fanciers who were up at 0600 UTC for the opening of the launch window saw repeated resets of the countdown clock before Jeff Besoz's company eventually threw in the towel, citing problems with a subsystem.

In a post on X, Blue Origin said: "We're standing down on today's launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We're reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt."

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During the broadcast until the scrub, references were made to "issues" the company was working on throughout the countdown. The decision to scrub the launch after multiple countdown resets was therefore not a huge surprise, particularly considering this is the very first launch of the rocket.

Blue Origin is in good company. NASA, for example, famously scrubbed the Artemis I launch attempt due to a liquid hydrogen leak. The monster rocket finally got off the pad in November 2022. It is unlikely that there will be a months-long delay before Blue Origin tries again, but the company has not disclosed the next Not-Earlier-Than (NET) date for lift-off.

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Blue Origin has faced several challenges even getting to this point. As well as some substantial technical hold-ups, complications with the weather in the last few days held up the launch attempt – Blue Origin would like to attempt a recovery of the first stage using a floating platform, but high seas have prevented this in recent days, despite it not being the primary goal of the test flight.

In addition to the weather, range troubles might also cause Blue Origin headaches. As Blue Origin's New Glenn remains on Launch Complex 36, a SpaceX Falcon 9 is due to be blasted from Kennedy Space Center's LC-39A on January 15. The mission will carry lunar landers in the form of Japan's Hakuto-R Mission 2 and Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost M2, which is transporting ten NASA payloads to the lunar surface. ®

Updated at 0828 UTC on January 14th to add:

Since the publication of the story, Blue Origin has since explained that the scrub was caused by ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit (APU) that powers some of the company's hydraulic systems. It said it was hoping to try again on Tuesday (today) but warned that the weather was not looking good. Blue Origin later moved the date for the next New Glenn launch attempt to Thursday, January 16, with the three-hour launch window opening at 0600 UTC.