Space: Blue Origin prepares to launch its own rocket

Jeff Bezos is taking the next step to catch up with his rival Elon Musk and his company SpaceX in the frantic race for space conquest. Blue Origin, the space company of the founder of Amazon, is preparing to carry out the maiden flight of its New Glenn heavy launcher in the coming days.

98 meters high, the American company’s New Glenn rocket could take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida as early as 1 a.m. local time on Wednesday (7 a.m. in Switzerland), according to the American aviation regulator, with another firing window on Friday.

Blue Origin has already been taking space tourists for a few minutes into space with its New Shepard rocket for several years. But it has not yet conducted any flights into orbit. With New Glenn, much more powerful, it aims to enter a new market, that of launching heavy commercial and military satellites and sending ships to the Moon or even Mars.

This inaugural flight will represent “a big step forward for Blue Origin and for the space industry,” sector analyst Laura Forczyk told AFP. With this high-capacity rocket, the company will “not only be able to compete with (sending) satellites, delivery and transport” in space, but it will also have “the capacity to launch astronauts,” explains- she said.

The challenge is clear: to compete with SpaceX, which currently dominates the market, and to a lesser extent the American groups ULA and French Arianespace.

“SpaceX has been in recent years almost the only player” in the field of commercial and military launches, notes Scott Hubbard, former executive of the American space agency and professor at Stanford. “So if I were still a senior manager at NASA, I would be delighted to finally have competition for the Falcon 9” from SpaceX which entered service in the early 2010s, he said.

Once the New Glenn rocket is launched, its first stage, which propelled the whole thing, must attempt a controlled landing on a barge at sea, a delicate maneuver similar to those carried out by SpaceX.

If this launch is a success, other New Glenn flights should follow in 2025. The company has already signed contracts with several clients, including NASA for a mission to Mars, now planned for the spring, and a another manned mission to the Moon with Artemis 5 by 2030.

Blue Origin also has contracts with the American government for national security missions and with commercial players, including the Canadian company Telesat for the deployment of internet satellites.

And like SpaceX with Starlink, it should be responsible for launching some of the Amazon group’s satellites, the two entrepreneurs at their head also competing in the field, each working on the deployment of their own galaxy.

The great rapprochement between Elon Musk and future President Donald Trump also raises concerns about possible conflicts of interest and negative repercussions for the activities of Jeff Bezos.