Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin reaches orbit in 1st New Glenn launch, misses booster landing
Blue Origin’s monumental New Glenn rocket successfully took off from Florida early Thursday morning on its maiden voyage to space, marking a significant milestone for Jeff Bezos’ space company as it sets its sights on challenging SpaceX in the satellite launch industry.
Standing an impressive thirty stories tall and equipped with a reusable first stage, New Glenn soared into the sky at around 2 a.m. ET from Blue Origin’s launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This launch came after a second attempt earlier in the week, with the rocket’s seven engines roaring to life under cloudy skies.
The atmosphere was electric at Blue Origin’s headquarters in Kent, Wash., and its rocket factory in Cape Canaveral, Fla., as hundreds of employees erupted into cheers when Blue Origin vice-president Ariane Cornell confirmed that the rocket’s second stage had successfully reached orbit, a long-awaited achievement for the company.
“We hit our key, critical, No. 1 objective, we got to orbit safely,” Cornell announced on a company livestream. “And y’all, we did it on our first go.”
While the rocket’s first stage booster was intended to land on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean after separating from the second stage, it unfortunately did not make a successful landing. Cornell confirmed that telemetry from the booster was lost shortly after liftoff.
“We did, in fact, lose the booster,” Cornell disclosed.
This mission represents the culmination of a decade-long, multibillion-dollar development effort for Blue Origin, marking the company’s first foray into Earth’s orbit since Bezos founded it 25 years ago. Bezos had expressed his nervousness about the booster landing prior to the launch but emphasized that achieving the milestone of delivering the payload to its intended orbit would be the ultimate goal.
The payload for this mission included the first prototype of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring vehicle, a maneuverable spacecraft designed for Pentagon and commercial customers for national security and satellite servicing missions.
The rocket’s initial launch attempt earlier in the week was scrubbed due to ice accumulation on a propellant line. However, on Thursday, no issues were reported ahead of the launch.
Bezos closely monitored the launch from Blue Origin’s mission control room, accompanied by launch staff and CEO Dave Limp. The New Glenn rocket is now expected to move forward with a backlog of missions, including up to 27 launches for Amazon’s Kuiper satellite internet network, competing directly with SpaceX’s Starlink service.
As the latest addition to the U.S. rocket fleet, New Glenn joins the ranks of other recent debuts such as NASA’s Space Launch System and the Vulcan rocket from United Launch Alliance. With twice the power of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, New Glenn boasts a larger payload bay diameter to accommodate larger satellite batches, positioning Blue Origin as a formidable player in the space launch industry.
The development of New Glenn has faced its fair share of challenges and delays, but with this successful maiden voyage, Blue Origin is poised to compete with industry giants like SpaceX and its forthcoming Starship rocket. Bezos, in a bid to accelerate progress at Blue Origin, appointed Limp as CEO to drive the development of New Glenn and its BE-4 engines, instilling a sense of urgency to keep pace with SpaceX.
In the ever-evolving landscape of space exploration, New Glenn’s entry into orbit signifies a new chapter for Blue Origin as it vies for a prominent position in the competitive satellite launch market.
