Launch Of Jeff Bezos' Giant New Blue Origin Rocket Scrapped Due To Technical Problem

A planned launch of Blue Origin's giant new rocket was called off early on Monday morning due to an issue with a vehicle subsystem.

The rocket company founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said, "We're reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt."

Named New Glenn after legendary astronaut John Glenn, it stands 320 feet tall, roughly equivalent to a 32-story building.

New Glenn's inaugural mission had a three-hour launch window at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida that opened at 1 a.m. Engineers could not resolve the problem before the window closed.

The launch date had been delayed several days due to the high seas in the Atlantic where the company hoped to land the booster.

New Glenn's inaugural mission will be the rocket's first National Security Space Launch certification flight.

Blue Origin says the payload will be its Blue Ring Pathfinder. The flight is to test operational capabilities as part of the Defense Innovation Unit's Orbital Logistics prototype effort.

"We know landing the booster on our first try offshore in the Atlantic is ambitious," the company said.

Bezos, the world's second-richest man, is taking aim at the world's wealthiest: Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX dominates the orbital launch market, the AFP noted.

Musk's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets serve the commercial sector, the Pentagon, and NASA -- including, crucially, ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.