Skip to content

An icy ventilation line may have caused Blue Origin to scrap New Glenn's debut launch

    COCOA BEACH, Fla.—With 45 minutes remaining in a three-hour launch period, Blue Origin scrapped its first attempt to launch the massive New Glenn rocket early Monday morning

    Throughout the window, which opened at 1 a.m. ET (06:00 UTC), the company continued to reset the countdown clock as launch engineers resolved technical issues with the rocket.

    Officially, Blue Origin was vague on both the live webcast and on social media after the scrub about the cause of the delayed launch attempt.

    “We are pausing today's launch attempt to resolve a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us outside our launch window,” the company said. “We are reviewing options for our next launch attempt.”

    Sources said the main problem was likely ice blocking one of the vent lines that carry pressurized gas away from the vehicle. Several attempts were made to melt the ice, but these attempts were unsuccessful, necessitating scrubbing. Hopefully Blue Origin will provide more information about the cause of the scrub in the coming days.

    To land or not to land?

    In addition, there appears to have been a problem with at least one of the auxiliary power units that power the rocket after the engines are shut down. One of the main purposes of these APUs is to power the deployment of landing legs needed to make a soft landing on the company's drone ship. Jaclyn. It was not immediately clear Monday morning whether Blue Origin would have gone ahead with the launch if they had had to land the first stage in the ocean, instead of trying to land a barge.