Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket Set for Historic Launch Attempt
Almost 25 years after Jeff Bezos established Blue Origin, the rocket business is about to experience its most significant milestone: the first-ever launch of a vehicle into orbit.
As soon as 1 a.m. ET on Monday, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will try its first launch from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Blue Origin said in an email that a live stream of the mission will begin approximately one hour prior to liftoff on its website, YouTube channel, and social networking platform X.
The approximately 320-foot (98-meter) New Glenn is one of the most potent rockets in the world and the first Blue Origin rocket built to carry satellites into space. It is classified as a heavy-lift launch vehicle and has more than twice the power output during takeoff of SpaceX’s reliable Falcon 9 rocket.
The Blue Ring Pathfinder, a demonstration technology developed by Blue Origin, will be launched into orbit on the uncrewed New Glenn mission.
If successful, New Glenn’s launch might put Blue Origin in a better position to take on SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, who has long controlled the commercial launch market.
What to watch for
The New Glenn rocket’s first-stage rocket booster, the main component that provides the initial power boost during liftoff, will have seven BE-4 engines at its base if all goes as planned.
The booster will separate from the upper part of the rocket, which includes the payload fairing, or nose cone, that protects cargo during liftoff, a few minutes after the rocket has burned through the majority of its fuel.
In order to help steer itself toward its landing objective, a seafaring recovery platform dubbed Jacklyn after Bezos’ mother, the rocket will subsequently utilize fins and strakes, which are winglike extensions that flare out from its top and base, respectively.
The rocket will fire parts of its engines again and spread out its six enormous legs to stand on just before landing on the platform.
The landing technique is an attempt to reduce launch costs by enabling Blue Origin to reuse and refurbish rocket boosters, similar to what SpaceX does with their Falcon rockets.
The Blue Ring Pathfinder experiment will proceed toward the stars from the upper part of New Glenn in the meantime. The ship should be propelled to the speeds required to enter orbit by two engines that are tuned to operate in the vacuum of space. These speeds are normally approximately 17,500 miles per hour, or roughly 23 times the speed of sound.
For this flight, Blue Origin said it will not deploy a satellite into orbit. Rather, the Blue Ring Pathfinder payload is expected to remain attached to the rocket’s upper stage for the duration of the six-hour mission.
What’s at stake
There is no assurance of success. New Glenn might experience a mission-ending malfunction at any time during the journey. In a ground test conducted in late December, the business has only ignited all seven BE-4 engines at the rocket’s base for a total of 24 seconds.
The engines must run for at least a few times that amount of time during this voyage as New Glenn tries to resist the gravity of Earth.
The corporation might have to install a self-destruct function if something goes wrong and New Glenn starts to fly in a different direction, destroying the rocket completely so that it won’t endanger people or property.
Additionally, Blue Origin may succeed in its main objective, which is to successfully launch the rocket’s second stage and Blue Ring Pathfinder technology into the desired orbit. However, the corporation might still be unable to land its New Glenn rocket booster on the Jacklyn platform after launch, even if that goal is accomplished.
However, the mission would not be deemed failure if the rocket booster could not be safely landed: The only goal of recovering rocket pieces for reuse is to save Blue Origin money. With the exception of SpaceX, the majority of rocket builders trash that section of the rocket after launch.
“The vehicle is likely to make a big splash in the launch market if and when New Glenn proves it can get the job done,” said Caleb Henry, head of research at Quilty Space, which provides data and analysis about the space sector.
The New Glenn is a heavy-lift vehicle, Henry noted, and vehicles of its size and power have “grown in importance over the years.”
Roughly a decade ago, rocket companies anticipated that small, lightweight rockets would become the next launch phenomenon because they would be capable of rapidly launching satellites intended to flesh out a string of mega constellations — or networks of small satellites — in low-Earth orbit.
“But two things happened,” Henry said. “First is that none of the constellation (operators) went to small rockets. They all went to the medium- or heavy-lift because getting more up in a single mission is faster and more economical than doing this one or two satellites at a time. And then the second is those satellites themselves got bigger.”
