By AP Aerospace Writer MARCIA DUNN
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)—Due to technical difficulties, Blue Origin canceled the initial launch of its enormous new rocket early Monday.
The 320-foot New Glenn rocket was scheduled to launch from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with a test satellite before sunrise. However, launch controllers ran out of time in the last few minutes of the countdown due to an unidentified rocket problem. They started removing all of the rocket’s fuel as soon as the countdown clock was stopped.
Blue Origin said the team required additional time to fix the issue, therefore they did not immediately announce a new launch date.
The company’s plan to land the first-stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic was threatened by choppy seas, which had already delayed the test flight.
John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, is honored with the name of New Glenn. Compared to Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which transports paying customers from Texas to the edge of space, it is five times taller.
Twenty-five years ago, Jeff Bezos established Amazon. Approximately 50 miles east of Orlando, Florida, at the rocket factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, he participated in Monday’s countdown from Mission Control.
On Sunday evening, Bezos declared, “We’re going to pick ourselves up and keep going no matter what.”