Blue Origin company celebrated the launch of the first rocket in the last 15 months into space with the New Shepard ship on Monday, December 18. The start was scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (5:30 p.m. Kiev time). But the suborbital launch was canceled after an hour delay due to inclement weather conditions near Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas.

“We are withdrawing from the launch of #NS24 due to possible issues with the ground system that the team is currently working on. We will announce the new launch date soon. It will take place this week.”— the company announced on its page on the social network X.

The New Shepard spacecraft was designed to carry not only cargo but also humans into low Earth orbit. However, the company has not conducted a single launch since last fall, after an anomaly occurred in the first stage on September 12, 2022, which caused the launch vehicle to be lost. Fortunately, the launch was unmanned. There were 36 different research cargo on board the spacecraft. The payload-capable New Shepard apparatus managed to successfully separate from the rocket and land safely on parachutes near the launch site.

An investigation into the incident by Blue Origin found that the cause of the accident was a “structural failure of the engine nozzle” of the first stage used to lift the New Shepard spacecraft. Following the incident, the company made changes to the design of this engine element.

Today’s launch of New Shepard was also supposed to be unmanned. The new mission was named NS-24 as it would be the ship’s 24th launch. As part of this, 33 research cargoes were planned to be launched into low Earth orbit. Blue Origin explains in its mission statement that more than half of these were developed by NASA. Others were prepared by students of various American high schools, universities and other educational institutions.

NS-24 also has 38,000 “Future Club” brochures. It is a non-profit organization founded by Blue Origin whose purpose is to stimulate interest in space exploration and related issues among young people.