Blue Origin Scrubs New Glenn Rocket’s Debut Launch (2025)

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Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

Here’s what did and didn’t happen on the launchpad.

There’s a new rocket that’s never flown waiting on a launchpad in Florida. It’s called New Glenn and it’s going to have to stay there a little longer.

On Monday, propellants were loaded into the vehicle and a countdown clock started. Then the clock was reset again. And again. And again.

After two hours and nine minutes, the launch director at Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company started by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, decided to wait until another day to ignite the rocket’s seven powerful engines and send it to orbit for the first time.

There’s a lot on the line for this flight, and the company decided they didn’t want to risk something going wrong. On X, it said it needed to “troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window.”

Compared with SpaceX and some other companies, New Glenn is a bit of a latecomer in the private space race. The test flight aims to get the company off the starting block and onto the track.

If the mission succeeds, New Glenn would immediately provide an additional option for companies and government agencies to launch large satellites and spacecraft.

It would also suggest that Mr. Bezos’ company could finally grow into a credible competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

But if a major failure occurs during the flight, it could strand payloads for NASA, Amazon and other customers on the ground for months or maybe even years.

Here’s what happened during Monday’s countdown:

  • The countdown was reset repeatedly: The flight, which Blue Origin calls NG-1, had a three-hour window in which to liftoff, from 1 a.m. Eastern until 4 a.m. The company set the launch time from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida at 1:31 a.m. Then it slipped to 1:52 a.m., 2:07 a.m., 2:27 a.m., 2:48 a.m. and finally 3:15 a.m.

  • When the rocket may try to launch next: The company did not yet schedule a new date. An attempt on Tuesday is probably unlikely, but later in the week might be possible. The launch window would again be 1 a.m. to 4 a.m.

  • About the rocket: New Glenn is a bit taller than the Statue of Liberty and its base. The rocket has a larger payload capacity than other rockets currently in operation. For the postponed flight, it is carrying a prototype of Blue Ring, a vehicle Blue Origin is developing to move payloads to different orbits after they go to space.

  • Why the launch window was in the very early morning: The Federal Aviation Administration dictated that. “That launch window, it interferes less with aviation,” Mr. Bezos said in an interview.

  • Blue Origin’s stretch goal: New Glenn’s booster stage is intended to be reusable. When Blue Origin announces the next flight attempt, they will try to land the booster on a barge floating in the Atlantic Ocean. The company knows this is a difficult feat to pull off during a rocket’s debut flight, and named the booster So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance.

Jan. 13, 2025, 3:11 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

The launch has been scrubbed for today. “We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue,” Blue Origin reported on X. No new launch date has been set yet.

Jan. 13, 2025, 2:39 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

Another countdown clock reset. Launch time is pushed back to 3:15 a.m. If the “anomalies” can’t be fixed soon, the launch window will close at 4 a.m. and launch would have to be another day.

Jan. 13, 2025, 2:41 a.m. ET

Michael Roston

Editing spaceflight news

Ariane Cornell of Blue Origin notes on the live stream that weather remains favorable for flight. So that means we’re waiting for the rocket to be ready.

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Jan. 13, 2025, 2:31 a.m. ET

Michael Roston

Editing spaceflight news

Maggie McNeece, a Blue Origin employee contributing to the commentary on the livestream, said that launch teams were working “through a few anomalies before we can proceed into terminal count,” but did not describe what they were. There are about 90 minutes left in the launch window.

Jan. 13, 2025, 2:13 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

Blue Origin has not explained the issues pushing back the countdown, or the likelihood that they will be resolved before the launch window closes at 4 a.m. Eastern.

Jan. 13, 2025, 2:14 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

And the countdown just reset again. 2:48 a.m. now.

Jan. 13, 2025, 2:01 a.m. ET

Michael Roston

Editing spaceflight news

I wound back the live stream and they got to T-9:21 this time.

Jan. 13, 2025, 1:50 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

What Blue Origin has done so far.

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Blue Origin was founded in 2000, but most of its accomplishments to date are modest.

The company has launched to space before, but not to orbit. Its small vehicle, New Shepard, takes space tourists to the edge of space on flights that are called suborbital because they just go up and down like a roller coaster, with a velocity of zero at the top of the arc. To reach orbit, a spacecraft has to reach a speed of more than 17,000 miles per hour.

The vehicle also carries scientific experiments for testing in microgravity. And New Shephard is fully reusable — its booster and capsule both land and later fly again.

New Glenn, the rocket flying on Friday, uses seven engines called BE-4s. Some have been to orbit already, but not aboard a Blue Origin rocket. The Vulcan rocket built by a competitor, United Launch Alliance, was designed to rely on two of Blue Origin’s BE-4s, and it made two successful launches to orbit last year.

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Jan. 13, 2025, 1:47 a.m. ET

Michael Roston

Editing spaceflight news

Blue Origin’s video stream is currently offering up panning views of the rocket and its launch tower, and ambient sounds of the vents releasing gases from the loaded propellants. It’s rocket ASMR.

Jan. 13, 2025, 1:34 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

The countdown clock reset again. Launch time now 2:07 a.m.

Jan. 13, 2025, 1:15 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

The launch time was just pushed back. Instead of 1:31 a.m. Eastern time, it's now, T-37 minutes.

Jan. 13, 2025, 1:16 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

Launch time now appears to be 1:52 a.m. Eastern.

Jan. 13, 2025, 1:14 a.m. ET

Michael Roston and Kenneth Chang

Will it be fair to call New Glenn’s launch a success or failure? Here are some scenarios.

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New Glenn has never launched before. When it heads to space, its mission will be a test flight.

Blue Origin is doing that to gather data on a vehicle’s performance to improve future missions. Test flights don’t always go off as planned. Because the company plans for New Glenn to then become operational, carrying payloads for paying customers, the stakes are high.

In an interview before the launch on Sunday, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin, and Dave Limp, the company’s chief executive, said they would regard reaching orbit and activating the Blue Ring payload as the measuring stick for success. Falling short of that would be a major setback.

“You have to be prepared for things to go wrong,” Mr. Bezos said. “You certainly are hoping that things go well. I think we’re ready.”

Below are some scenarios describing what may go right or wrong during the flight, and how they may be interpreted along a spectrum of success and failure.

A launchpad or early flight explosion

Blue Origin was founded in 2000. It has launched smaller suborbital rockets numerous times. And the BE-4 engines on New Glenn have helped Vulcan, a rocket flown by the company United Launch Alliance, reach orbit twice.

If the whole vehicle were to be destroyed on the launchpad during fueling or seconds after liftoff, it could suggest a serious problem with New Glenn that could ground the rocket for a long time.

An accident during separation

On early flights, many rockets have had trouble with the act of separation between the lower boosters and the upper stages that go to orbit. That would not be entirely unexpected for New Glenn’s initial launch. But it would mean that additional work is required ahead of future flights involving payloads from customers like NASA and the Department of Defense or private companies like Amazon.

If New Glenn fails to reach orbit, “It would probably push things back and how much it would depend on the cause of the failure,” Mr. Bezos said.

A good launch to orbit

New Glenn’s booster could have what the engineers call a nominal flight, and then send its upper stage on an orbit of the Earth. If Blue Origin is able to relight the vehicle’s upper stage engines in the vacuum of space, it would suggest that the design of New Glenn is sound, and its prospects for future missions are strong.

An impressive booster landing

SpaceX is the only company that has routinely landed and reused booster stages of an orbital rocket. Its Falcon 9 rocket had been flying for a number of years before it tried the feat, and SpaceX had a number of explosive failures before it figured out how to do it right.

Blue Origin hopes to pull off an audacious debut for New Glenn by attempting to land its booster stage on an autonomous ship named Jacklyn in the Atlantic Ocean. The company even named it “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance.”

“Landing the booster on Jacklyn would be gravy,” Mr. Bezos said. “Attempting to land the booster on the very first attempt, some people might say that’s a little crazy. It’s certainly ambitious. And we’re certainly not counting on that.”

Expectations are not high. But if New Glenn beats the odds and has a good first flight and booster separation in orbit, it will be like a novice pool player running the table.

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Jan. 13, 2025, 1:09 a.m. ET

Michael Roston

Editing spaceflight news

Jeff Bezos is in the launch control room in Florida that is monitoring the countdown and the rocket’s readiness to fly.

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Blue Origin Scrubs New Glenn Rocket’s Debut Launch (18)

Jan. 13, 2025, 12:59 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

This is what will happen during New Glenn’s flight.

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Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket is poised upright at Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

Preparations began in earnest several hours before launch when liquid hydrogen started flowing into New Glenn’s propellant tanks.

At 10 minutes before liftoff time, the launch director will conduct a “go poll,” asking people whether the rocket’s systems are ready and whether the weather conditions are favorable.

The last four minutes before launch are the “terminal count” when the rocket’s computer takes over the countdown process.

The seven engines in the booster will ignite 5.6 seconds before liftoff. That gives the computer a chance to check the performance of the engines before committing to liftoff. If anything is not quite right, it will shut down the engines.

If everything is good, the clamps holding the rocket will let go, and New Glenn will rise into the sky.

A crucial moment will come one minute, 39 seconds after launch as the rocket passes through what is known as max-Q, when atmospheric pressure on the rocket is greatest.

If it passes through that moment intact, the booster during the third minute of the flight will be done pushing the rocket upward and the engines will shut down. Twelve seconds later, it will drop away, and nine seconds after that, the second-stage engine will fire up.

Not long afterward, the fairing — the two halves of the nose cone protecting the payload — will jettison. At that altitude, the atmosphere is thin enough that the fairing is no longer needed.

Over the next few minutes, the booster will light up twice as it tries to land on a floating platform named Jacklyn, after Jeff Bezos’ mother, in the Atlantic Ocean.

Meanwhile, the second-stage engine will continue to fire until nearly 13 minutes after launch and then shut down.

Blue Origin will then switch on a prototype of its Blue Ring space tug, testing the communications, power and computer systems. It will remain attached to the rocket’s second stage.

About an hour after launch, the second stage will perform another engine burn to push it into a high elliptical orbit, coming as close as 1,500 miles from Earth and swinging out as far away as 12,000 miles. That is much higher than launches to low-Earth orbit, a few hundred miles up.

In an interview on Sunday, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin, said that orbit will allow testing of the communications systems at a wide variety of altitudes. “And it puts the vehicle in a very harsh radiation environment, which we also want to test,” he said.

Then, almost six hours after launch, the mission will be over. The systems on the rocket stage and Blue Ring will be made safe and turned off, and they will continue their elliptical orbiting. Few other satellites occupy that region, making the chances slim that it will collide with anything else.

“It gets disposed in place,” Mr. Bezos said.

Jan. 13, 2025, 12:53 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

A countdown clock has appeared on the livestream. Launch time appears to be 1:31 a.m. Eastern, 31 minutes into the three-hour window.

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Jan. 13, 2025, 12:36 a.m. ET

Michael Roston

Editing spaceflight news

Blue Origin’s live video stream has started and you can watch it in the video player above. The company has yet to announce whether it will attempt a launch in about 25 minutes, or if it is planning a later time in the launch window, which remains open until 4 a.m. Eastern time.

Jan. 13, 2025, 12:39 a.m. ET

Michael Roston

Editing spaceflight news

Ariane Cornell, a Blue Origin executive who provides live commentary for many of the company’s launches, just said on the livestream “This is really happening.”

Jan. 13, 2025, 12:20 a.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

That the Blue Origin livestream hasn’t started yet suggests that the launch time has slipped from the 1 a.m. Eastern opening of the launch window. The company said its coverage would start one hour before liftoff.

Jan. 13, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET

Karen Weise

For Jeff Bezos, New Glenn’s success is personal.

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Jeff Bezos has long been a fan of science fiction. He grew up inspired by NASA’s Apollo missions. Since at least high school, he has talked about moving humanity to space.

“I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system,” he said on a podcast in 2023. “The only way to get to that vision is with giant space stations.”

The world’s second richest man — behind only space rival Elon Musk — Mr. Bezos has channeled billions of his fortune toward turning his childhood dreams into a reality through his space company, Blue Origin.

Though he founded Blue Origin more than two decades ago, its successes have long lagged behind Mr. Musk’s SpaceX. Mr. Bezos said the main reason he stepped down as chief executive at Amazon in 2021 was to focus on Blue Origin and add urgency and speed to its operations.

Just weeks after his last day running Amazon, Mr. Bezos put on a flight suit and joined the crew on Blue Origin’s first suborbital passenger flight. In 2023, he moved to Miami, partly, he said, to be closer to the Cape Canaveral launch site of the New Glenn rocket.

The vehicle is designed to repeatedly send large payloads into orbit, making it critical to his space plans. Mr. Bezos has said he believes humans must lower the cost of hauling materials into orbit so that, future generations can move polluting industries into space.

New Glenn’s success is also critical for Amazon. The company is depending on New Glenn, as well as on another new rocket that uses Blue Origin’s engines, as key vehicles to launch Project Kuiper, its constellation of thousands of satellites that will compete with SpaceX’s Starlink in providing internet access from space in low Earth orbit.

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Jan. 12, 2025, 11:56 p.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

New Glenn is upright at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, but the site where Blue Origin is allowing journalists to view the launch is a few miles away at a beachfront hotel on Cocoa Beach. The rocket is lit up with a bright flame where vented propellant burns off. The beach here is devoid of spectators.

Jan. 12, 2025, 11:30 p.m. ET

Kenneth Chang

Reporting from Cocoa Beach, Fla.

What is the New Glenn rocket?

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In many ways, New Glenn is just a big rocket.

It is 320 feet tall. That is a bit higher than the Statue of Liberty and its base. At liftoff, nearly four million pounds of thrust spewing from seven booster engines will push the rocket upward. Its voluminous nose cone, 23 feet wide in diameter, will be able to hold payloads that are physically larger than other rockets in operation today.

New Glenn, however, is not the biggest rocket. NASA’s Space Launch System and SpaceX’s Starship are both taller and more powerful. The Blue Origin rocket does not rely on never-before-seen, whiz-bang technologies. It is not fully reusable, unlike what SpaceX is trying to make possible with Starship.

Reusable Rockets

If successful, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket might eventually compete with SpaceX in the business of launching to space.

Blue Origin Scrubs New Glenn Rocket’s Debut Launch (27)

320 feet

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Falcon 9

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Heavy

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Relative size of the

Space Shuttle

Blue Origin Scrubs New Glenn Rocket’s Debut Launch (28)

320 feet

SPACEX

ROCKETS

BLUE ORIGIN

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New Shepard

New Glenn

Falcon 9

Falcon

Heavy

Starship

Blue Origin Scrubs New Glenn Rocket’s Debut Launch (29)

BLUE ORIGIN

ROCKETS

SPACEX

ROCKETS

320 feet

New Shepard

New Glenn

Falcon 9

Starship

In terms of technology, New Glenn is similar to but bigger than the Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX’s current workhorse. The booster stage of New Glenn — the most expensive part of the rocket — is designed to land on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean, similar to how SpaceX recovers Falcon 9 boosters. The second stage, like those of almost all rockets in use today, will be discarded and burn up in the atmosphere.

But if New Glenn proves to be reliable and affordable, it should be able to carve out a profitable slice of the business of launching payloads to space for NASA, the Department of Defense and commercial companies.

Blue Origin Scrubs New Glenn Rocket’s Debut Launch (2025)

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