Jeff Bezos’ space travel company Blue Origin canceled the debut launch of its massive new rocket early Monday citing technical trouble.
The 320-foot New Glenn rocket was supposed to blast off before dawn with a prototype satellite from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
But launch controllers had to deal with an unspecified rocket issue in the final minutes of the countdown and ran out of time. Once the countdown clock was halted, they immediately began draining all the fuel from the rocket.
Star Trek’s Captain Kirk is rocketing into space this month. Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, Blue Origin, announced Monday that William Shatner will blast off from West Texas on Oct. 12. https://t.co/hDgzyAg8iL
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 5, 2021
AP reports the test flight already had been delayed by rough seas that posed a risk to the company’s plan to land the first-stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
New Glenn honors a legendary astronaut: John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth in 1962.
It follows in the steps of New Shepard, Blue Origin’s first rocket which was named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
It is five times taller than Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket that carries paying customers to the edge of space from Texas.
New Glenn is classified as a “heavy-lift launcher,” capable of placing substantial payloads into low-Earth orbit. It is expected to carry up to 45 tons into orbit.
Blue Origin did not immediately set a new launch date, saying the team needed more time to resolve the problem.
