Blue Origin Did Something Today

As far as I can tell, Blue Origin's first New Glenn rocket did something today, it's just hard to know what it actually was.  According to the local newspaper, Florida Today, it seems like they did a wet dress rehearsal (WDR), fully fueling the vehicle and doing everything that must happen before they start the engines, without actually starting the engines for their static fire test. 

Thursday afternoon, the massive 320-foot-tall New Glenn rocket sat on Launch Pad 36 at Cape Canaveral, steam billowing from it − indicating fuel was being poured into the rocket.

Blue Origin's promised wet dress rehearsal may have been underway, where New Glenn would be fueled, but not launched. After multiple hours of steam venting from the rocket, all activity stopped − signaling they concluded the test.

The only problem is that I just find no confirmation that's what they did from the top four news sources I regularly check and a visit to the "News" page on Blue Origin's website.  I see a video from NASA Spaceflight that has visuals of the rocket with "steam billowing from it" and the narrators refer to it as a WDR.  The video is about 90 minutes long and the steam is apparent from 10 minutes in to 60 minutes - approximately in both times.

We know that Blue Origin is pushing to try to launch before the end of this year,  now only 12 days away if you count working on Christmas.  It's possible that IF this was a WDR and IF it was successful that they could go to a static fire quickly, although I can't estimate how long that might take.  I only know if it wasn't successful, it will take longer to get to the static fire and first launch.  

Screen capture of the test from NASAspaceflight.com's video. The local time at the top left is close to 30 minutes on the sliding bar visible on the video when you're manually adjusting the times.

The New Glenn has been talked about for quite a long time.  While I have no idea when I heard about it for the first time it seems like it was at least as long as this has been a primarily space-oriented blog.  It might well be the first rocket talked about as being a reusable multistage rocket.  More powerful and larger than the Falcon Heavy, the New Glenn will feature seven of the BE-4 engines also used on ULA’s new Vulcan.  There are two and three stage versions with different payload capacities, this one seems to be the two stage version. In addition to being the first flight of any version of the New Glenn, this NG-1 mission will also be aimed at certifying the vehicle for National Security missions.