Space –
Jeff Bezos’ New Glenn rocket launch postponed again
The maiden flight of the New Glenn rocket, from the company Blue Origin, was postponed once again this Tuesday. A next attempt will take place on Thursday.
Posted today at 4:08 a.m.
A three-hour launch window will open on Thursday at 1:00 a.m. local (7:00 a.m. Swiss) for the New Glenn rocket.
AFP
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After a last minute cancellation, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin is now counting on a launch of its large New Glenn rocket, a highly anticipated maiden flight, no earlier than Thursday.
The New Glenn rocket was scheduled to blast off early Monday from Florida, but a technical problem led the company to cancel everything at the last minute. This decision, announced during a well-attended live broadcast, was due to an “ice formation” which affected an auxiliary system, Blue Origin said.
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After briefly considering a launch on Tuesday morning, the company announced Monday evening to postpone the New Glenn flight, already postponed several times, until “Thursday at the earliest”. A three-hour launch window will open on Thursday at 1:00 a.m. local time (7:00 a.m. Swiss), she said.
98 meters high
98 meters high, the size of a building of around 30 floors, this new rocket should mark a turning point for the company by allowing it to achieve its first orbital flight since its creation in 2000.
If the company of the founder of Amazon has already been taking tourists for a few minutes into space for years thanks to its smaller New Shepard rocket, it has so far not carried out any flight into orbit.
With New Glenn, Blue Origin aims to catch up with its great rival SpaceX, which belongs to another American billionaire, Elon Musk. The latter had also wished “good luck” to Blue Origin on the social network X.
The Tesla boss’s company has dominated the commercial space market for years with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, and is now developing the largest rocket ever created: Starship. SpaceX also intends to carry out the seventh test flight of its mega-rocket this week.
“Having a choice”
With New Glenn, which is a “heavy launcher”, Blue Origin aims to compete with SpaceX in its field: the launch of commercial and military satellites into orbit, but also ships and astronauts.
Its rocket must be able to carry up to 45 tonnes into low orbit. This is more than double that of Falcon 9, but less than Falcon Heavy (63.8 tonnes). “It’s a good thing to have competition, to have choice,” insists George Nield, president of a company promoting private space activities.
“This is very important for the commercial space industry, but also for the government and NASA” because it not only reduces costs, but also offers a plan B “in the event of a problem with a device”, he said.
Blue Origin has already signed contracts with several customers, including the US space agency for an unmanned mission to Mars, and the US government for national security missions. On the commercial side, it plans to deploy internet satellites for several companies. It should also, like SpaceX with Starlink, be responsible for launching satellites from the Amazon group.
“Much lower price”
The similarities between the two private space giants do not stop there. Like the Falcon 9, New Glenn is designed to be partly reusable. During this inaugural mission, which was to last approximately six hours, Blue Origin intended to attempt to recover the first stage of its rocket.
The company has already managed to land its New Shepard rocket in Texas. But this time, it intended to attempt a controlled landing on a barge at sea, a maneuver similar to that achieved by SpaceX with its Falcon 9 rocket.
“An extremely complicated process,” according to Elliott Bryner, professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. But while the race for the privatization and militarization of space is in full swing, this process which allows “reuse of large parts of rockets” is crucial because it allows both “to offer access to space at a much lower price” and to accelerate the pace of launches, he points out to AFP.
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