Blue Origin, owned by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has been forced to delay the first launch of its New Glenn rocket by at least 24 hours, but the delay is likely to be longer.
The company stated on its X platform that it was conducting a detailed analysis of a technical glitch that occurred just before the mission was to take off.
The flight, the culmination of a nearly 13-year, $2.5 billion reusable rocket effort, will attempt to land the first stage of the New Glenn rocket on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after liftoff. The second stage will then continue its journey into orbit.
In the cargo bay is the first prototype of the Blue Ring maneuvering spacecraft, which the company plans to sell to the Pentagon and commercial customers for national security and satellite maintenance.
New Glenn's development has been a decade-long process plagued by delays. Blue Origin has gone through three CEOs in that time, while Elon Musk's SpaceX has cemented its market leadership with the Falcon 9 reusable rocket.
In late 2023, Bezos decided to accelerate Blue Origin's development by making New Glenn and its BE-4 engines a top priority. He appointed Dave Limp, a former Amazon employee, to lead the effort.
New Glenn is more than twice as powerful as the Falcon 9 and already has dozens of launch contracts worth billions of dollars.
SpaceX has already launched its first Falcon 9 in 2025, carrying a batch of Starlink internet satellites.
