Blue Origin finally divulged a few details on why it canceled Monday's launch attempt Blue Origin's New Glenn on the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday. Alex G Perez/AGPfoto/Sipa USA Blue Origin took its time sharing information about why the company called off its first attempt to get New Glenn of the ground Monday. The company initially said only that engineers were troubleshooting issues with one of the rocket’s “subsystems.” But in a tweet posted Monday evening, more than 12 hours after the launch window closed, the company divulged in a social media post that the delay “was due to ice forming in a purge line” — which is a pipe or tube that funnels unwanted gases or debris away from critical hardware — “on an auxiliary power unit that powers some of our hydraulic systems.” Before Blue Origin waved off a Monday morning launch, the pre-launch webcast was punctuated by a dizzying series of clock resets that kept adding time back onto the countdown ticker. Little insight was given into what was happening behind the scenes. And unlike many other rocket companies, Blue Origin did not share audio from launch controlers that may have offered clues as to what engineers were grappling with. Maggie McNeece, one of the cohosts on the company’s webcast of the event, shared only this context on why the countdown clock kept resetting. “The team is continuing to work through a few anomalies before we can proceed into terminal count,” she said on the livestream. “Anomaly” is aerospace parlance for a data point or problem that is outside of what was expected. In concluding the Monday webcast, Ariane Cornell, Blue Origin’s vice president of in-space systems, said only that the company would work to drain the New Glenn rocket of its fuel. “From there, we’re going to assess, as mentioned, what are the things we might want to get done in our downtime? And that is what’s going to guide when the next launch opportunity will be,” Cornell said. Link Copied!