Blue Origin will try again to launch its massive new rocket as early as Thursday after calling off the debut launch because of ice buildup in critical plumbing.
The 320-foot (98-meter) New Glenn rocket was supposed to blast off before dawn Monday with a prototype satellite. But ice formed in a purge line for a unit powering some of the rocket’s hydraulic systems and launch controllers ran out of time to clear it, according to the company.
Founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin further delayed the launch because of Tuesday’s poor weather forecast for Cape Canaveral and a moonshot planned Wednesday by SpaceX. The test flight already had been postponed by rough seas that posed a risk to Blue Origin’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.
Bezos started 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.
No matter what happens, Bezos said this weekend, “We’re going to pick ourselves up and keep going.”