Blue Origin has scrubbed Monday’s extremely anticipated launch try of its New Glenn rocket.
With simply 13 minutes remaining on the countdown clock at Cape Canaveral in Florida early on Monday morning, the choice was taken to face down to present engineers an opportunity to troubleshoot “a car subsystem difficulty.”
The three-hour launch window opened at 1 a.m. ET, however after pausing and restarting the clock a number of occasions over the following couple of hours, the choice was lastly taken to droop launch operations at round 3 a.m. ET. A brand new schedule has but to be set.
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The NG-1 mission will carry the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload, which is able to check key applied sciences for the upcoming Blue Ring spacecraft. The payload’s communications array, energy system, and flight laptop will likely be evaluated throughout a six-hour operational part and stay connected to the rocket’s second stage all through.
Blue Origin can be planning to land the primary stage of the New Glenn on a platform floating within the sea off the coast of Florida, just like how SpaceX lands its reliable Falcon 9 booster. Such landings allow the boosters for use once more, serving to to drastically cut back launch prices.
The NG-1 mission is a large occasion for Blue Origin, as up till now it has solely carried out launches of its a lot much less highly effective sub-orbital, single-stage New Shepard rocket, which is especially used for brief tourism rides to the sting of area.
The long-term objective of the Washington-based spaceflight firm based by Jeff Bezos is to compete with SpaceX within the profitable satellite tv for pc launch market. It’s additionally engaged on a lunar lander and has plans to place a industrial area station in Earth orbit.
