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Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket enters orbit after launch from the Kennedy Space Center on its maiden flight, at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 16, 2025.
Gregg Newton | AFP | fake images
Blue Origin launched its towering New Glenn rocket for the first time on Thursday, in a crucial milestone for Jeff Bezos space company.
New Glenn rocketed off the launch pad in the early morning hours in Florida, reaching space and eventually entering orbit as part of a long-awaited debut mission. Blue Origin also attempted to land the rocket booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean, but the booster was lost during atmospheric re-entry.
The launch is a defining moment for Blue Origin.
Although founded 25 years ago, Bezos’s company had not yet begun flying to orbit: its much smaller New Shepard rocket only carried people and research on short trips to the edge of space. The New Glenn flight marks Blue Origin’s entry into a market dominated by Elon Musk SpaceX and is crucial to unlocking the billionaire centi founder’s broader ambitions.
There was no one aboard the New Glenn flight, which was carrying a small test payload into space. The rocket was named in honor of the late John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on January 16, 2025.
Miguel J. Rodríguez Carrillo | Getty Images News | fake images
Initially, the company aspired to the daring feat of flying NASA’s “ESCAPADE.” mission to Mars in the debut of New Glenn. But with a shrinking release window, the agency delayed ESCAPADE for a later release. Blue Origin also has orders for Amazon‘s Project Kuiper for at least 12 launches of its Internet satellites, as well as plans to launch the lunar space station and Orbital Reef Blue Moon. Bezos founded Amazon six years before creating Blue Origin.
Headquartered in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, Blue Origin has more than 10,000 employees there and in a half-dozen other major locations across the country, including the industrial strongholds of Texas, Florida and Alabama. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp previously told CNBC that Blue Origin has been “in sort of an R&D phase for a long time,” an aspect of the company’s culture it is trying to change.
Blue plans to rapidly scale the cadence of New Glenn missions and wants to conduct up to 10 New Glenn launches this year. Originally scheduled to debut in 2020, the rocket faced years of delays.
the mission
A few minutes after launch, the rocket booster separated and returned through the atmosphere. The booster, nicknamed “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,” was attempting to land on the company’s barge Jacklyn about 600 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, but failed to make it. Blue Origin’s latest webcast showed the booster at an altitude of about 84,000 feet.
While New Glenn did not deploy any satellites into orbit during the flight, it carried a small demonstration version of the company’s “Blue Ring” spacecraft. Known in the industry as an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) or space tug, Blue Ring is designed to host satellites and spacecraft, delivering them from the rocket to their intended target.
As is typical for the debut of an orbital rocket, the launch of New Glenn had a few bumps along the way, with delays of several days due to technical problems with the rocket and weather.
the rocket
The first New Glenn rocket is launched in preparation for launch.
blue origin
New Glenn is the size of a 30-story skyscraper, 322 feet tall — almost as tall as the Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo missions to the moon — and 23 feet in diameter. Blue’s rocket is powered by the company’s seven BE-4 engines, which together generate nearly 4 million pounds of thrust, and New Glenn’s nose is wide and tall enough to launch three school buses into space at time.
The rocket runs on liquid oxygen and liquid methane and is designed to be partially reusable, as Blue Origin aims to launch, land and relaunch each booster up to 25 times.
In terms of mass delivered to orbit per launch, New Glenn ranks between SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and Blue Origin’s vehicle is designed to lift up to 45,000 kilograms (or about 100,000 pounds) into Earth orbit. low.
Blue Origin has not disclosed the total cost or launch price of its New Glenn rockets. Three years ago, Blue Origin said it had invested $2.5 billion to date in developing New Glenn. And, according to a competitor’s estimate, New Glenn sells for about $70 million per release.
Until now, in the stakes of the orbital missions industry, Blue Origin had not entered the serious rocket game, as the US launch market remains dominated by SpaceX, followed by rocket laboratoryUnited Launch Alliance and Firefly Aerospace.
Blue Origin already has a foothold with New Glenn in the most lucrative part of the launch market: flying for the military. Last year, Blue Origin joined SpaceX and ULA in the Pentagon’s $5.6 billion National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, allowing the company to compete for contracts.
While Blue Origin has fallen behind SpaceX in the industry, Bezos has remained optimistic about his company’s potential.
“I think it will be the best business I’ve ever been involved in, but it will take a while,” Bezos recently said.
Jeff, welcome to the club.
