Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin cancels first launch of massive new rocket due to last-minute glitch

Cape Canaveral: Blue Origin canceled the first launch of its giant new rocket early Monday due to a technical problem.
The 320-foot New Glenn rocket was scheduled to launch before dawn from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida with a prototype satellite. But launch controllers had to deal with an unspecified rocket issue in the final minutes of the countdown and time ran out.
As soon as the countdown stopped, they immediately started draining all the fuel from the rocket.
Blue Origin did not immediately set a new launch date and said the team needed more time to resolve the issue.
The test flight had already been delayed due to rough seas, threatening the company’s plan to land the first stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic.
New Glenn is named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. That’s five times longer than Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which takes paying customers from Texas to the edge of space.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos founded the company 25 years ago. He participated in Monday’s countdown from Mission Control, located in the rocket factory just outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, about 80 kilometers east of Orlando, Florida.
No matter what happens, Bezos said Sunday evening, “We will pick ourselves up and move forward.”