Blue Origin launched its huge new rocket on its first check flight Thursday, sending up a prototype satellite tv for pc to orbit hundreds of miles above Earth.
Named after the first American to orbit Earth, the New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida, hovering from the identical pad used to launch NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft a half-century in the past.
Years within the making with heavy funding by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the 320-foot rocket carried an an experimental platform designed to host satellites or launch them into their correct orbits.
All seven principal engines fired at liftoff because the rocket blazed via the predawn sky, drawing cheers from spectators lining the close by seashores.
Firm staff erupted in shouts and frenzied applause as soon as the craft efficiently orbit 13 minutes later, a feat that drew fast reward from SpaceX’s Elon Musk.
Bezos — collaborating within the launch from Mission Management — declined to reveal his private funding in this system.
He stated he doesn’t see Blue Origin in a contest with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, lengthy the rocket-launching dominator.
He stood a lot of the time at his seat in Mission Management, wanting anxious and completely happy on the similar time.
“Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt!” Musk stated through X.
For this check, the satellite tv for pc was anticipated to stay contained in the second stage whereas circling Earth.
The mission was anticipated to final six hours, with the second stage then positioned in a protected situation to remain in a excessive, out-of-the-way orbit in accordance with NASA’s practices for minimizing area junk.
The primary-stage booster missed its touchdown on a barge within the Atlantic minutes after liftoff so it may very well be recycled, however the firm burdened that the extra necessary aim was for the check satellite tv for pc to achieve orbit. Bezos stated earlier than the flight it was “a little crazy” to even attempt to land the booster on the primary strive.
“What a fantastic day,” Blue Origin’s launch commentator Ariane Cornell, stated.
New Glenn was imagined to fly earlier than daybreak Monday, however ice buildup in crucial plumbing triggered a delay. The rocket is constructed to haul spacecraft and ultimately astronauts to orbit and in addition the moon.
Based 25 years in the past by Bezos, Blue Origin has been launching paying passengers to the sting of area since 2021, together with himself. The quick hops from Texas use smaller rockets named after the primary American in area, Alan Shepard. New Glenn, which honors John Glenn, is 5 instances taller.
Blue Origin poured greater than $1 billion into New Glenn’s launch web site, rebuilding historic Complicated 36 at Cape Canaveral Area Drive Station.
The pad is 9 miles from the corporate’s management facilities and rocket manufacturing facility, outdoors the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Area Heart.
Blue Origin envisions six to eight New Glenn flights this yr, if all the things goes nicely, with the subsequent one arising this spring.
“There’s room for lots of winners” Bezos stated from the rocket manufacturing facility over the weekend, including that this was the “very, very beginning of this new phase of the space age, where we’re all going to work together as an industry … to lower the cost of access to space.”
New Glenn is the most recent in a collection of massive, new rockets to launch lately, together with United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, Europe’s upgraded Ariane 6 and NASA’s Area Launch System or SLS, the area company’s successor to the Saturn V for sending astronauts to the moon.
The most important rocket of all, at roughly 400 ft, is SpaceX’s Starship.
Musk stated the seventh check flight of the complete rocket may happen later Thursday from Texas. He hopes to repeat what he pulled off in October, catching the returning booster on the launch pad with big mechanical arms.
Starship is what NASA plans to make use of to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. The primary two moon landings underneath the area company’s Artemis program, which follows the Apollo missions of the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, will see crews descending from lunar orbit to the floor in Starships.
Blue Origin’s lander, dubbed Blue Moon, will make its debut on the third lunar landing by astronauts.
NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson pushed for competing moon landers just like the technique to rent two firms to ferry astronauts to and from the Worldwide Area Station. Nelson will step down when President-elect Donald Trump takes workplace on Monday.
Trump has tapped tech billionaire Jared Isaacman to run NASA. Isaacman, who has twice rocketed into orbit on his personal privately financed SpaceX flights, have to be authorised by the Senate.
New Glenn’s debut was imagined to ship twin spacecraft to Mars for NASA. However the area company pulled them from final October’s deliberate flight when it grew to become clear the rocket wouldn’t be prepared in time.
They’ll nonetheless fly on a New Glenn rocket, however not till spring on the earliest. The 2 small spacecraft, named Escapade, are supposed to research the Martian environment and magnetic atmosphere whereas orbiting the crimson planet.
