Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ space company cancels the first launch of a new rocket

Blue Origin canceled the first launch of its massive new rocket early Monday due to a technical issue.

The 98-meter-long New Glenn rocket was supposed to lift off before dawn, carrying a prototype of the satellite, from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. But launch controllers had to deal with an unidentified rocket problem in the final minutes of the countdown, and time ran out. Once the countdown clock stopped, they immediately began draining all the fuel from the rocket.

Blue Origin did not immediately set a new launch date, saying the team needed more time to solve the problem.

The test flight had already been delayed due to rough waves that posed a threat to the company’s plan to land the first stage booster on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

New Glenn is named after the first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn. It’s five times longer than Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, which takes paying customers to the edge of space from Texas.

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, founded the company 25 years ago. He participated in Monday’s countdown from Mission Control, located at the rocket factory 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 pull ourselves together and keep moving forward.”