Blue Origin entered into the history books in the predawn hours of Thursday. The company, founded by Jeff Bezos, became the first to successfully reach orbit on their first launch with a new orbital-class rocket in the new era of commercial spaceflight that dawned in the last two decades.
After dealing with an unplanned hold to chill its engines and a wayward boat entering the keep out zone, the New Glenn rocket, standing as tall as a 32-story building lumbered off the pad under the power of 3.9 million pounds of thrust.
The seven BE-4 engines on the first stage booster roared to life at 2:03 a.m. EST (0703 UTC) shining a brilliant orange that turned to blue as the liquified natural gas (LNG) fueled rocket began its journey from pad 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
Blue Origin dealt with multiple weather-related delays to get to launch day and even during the countdown, faced uncertain skies that threatened to potentially delay the mission yet again.
It also ran into technical issues on its way to launch. Blue Origin said an issue that prevented Monday’s launch was “ice forming in a purge line on an auxiliary power unit that powers some of [New Glenn’s] hydraulic systems.” Teams worked to clear that issue during the three-hour window, but weren’t able to do so in time.
They were further stymied from launching on Tuesday due to poor weather.
One of the goals of the NG-1 mission was to attempt to land the first stage booster, named ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,’ on Blue Origin’s landing vessel, named ‘Jacklyn,’ which was positioned out in the Atlantic Ocean.
Following a successful stage separation, Blue Origin confirmed that it was able to reignite three out of the seven BE-4 engines, as intended, to perform a nearly 30-second entry burn. But soon after, the telemetry data displayed on the screen for the booster was frozen and the launch commentator said they weren’t receiving data.
Ultimately, it was determined that the touchdown on the 380-foot-long (116 m) landing vessel, named ‘Jacklyn,’ was unsuccessful. That said, going into the launch, Blue Origin said repeatedly that landing the booster was an aspirational goal and not their main objective.
They even went as far as naming the booster, ‘So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance.’ Prior to the launch, Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp spoke with Aviation Week and acknowledged that it was as a stretch goal to be sure.
“It’s very hard to simulate the environments, the hypersonic environment as it’s coming back and so, there’s a number events that happen to make that landing successful that we just have to fly to test,” Limp said. “And that’s why it would be icing on the cake if we landed it, but we will learn so much.”
In addition to gathering data about the rocket and the launch flow, the primary goal for Blue Origin was to reach orbit with its second stage and also learn more about its orbital space tug, the Blue Ring. While it wasn’t hosting or deploying any satellites on this mission, it was designed to “validate space to ground communications capabilities by sending commands, receiving telemetry, receiving store and compute mission data, and performing radiometric tracking (for navigation).”
The Blue Ring powered on roughly 14 minutes into the flight and Blue Origin confirmed that the second burn was successful. Blue Origin confirmed that New Glenn’s upper stage, known as Glenn Stage 2 (GS2), reached its target, highly elliptical orbit in the range of the medium Earth orbit, with an apogee of 19,300 km and a perigee of 2,400 km at a 30 degree inclination, which was achieved about an hour and 20 minutes into the mission.
Accolades came from around the space community, welcoming Bezos and his company into the club of those who’ve successfully flown to orbit.
“Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt!” SpaceX founder Elon Musk said in a post on X, tagging Bezos.
“Congratulations @JeffBezos and to the entire @blueorigin team for making the first rocket to achieve orbit on the first launch attempt. 25 years of persistence paid off tonight!” tweeted Astra founder and CEO, Chris Kemp.
“A big week for space! Huge congrats to team @blueorigin,” posted Rocket Lab. The company deployed its second Pioneer spacecraft for Varda Space as part of the Transporter-12 rideshare mission that launched on Tuesday and also contributed the solar panels to Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, which launched on Wednesday morning.
What’s next for Blue Origin?
Following the elation of successfully reaching orbit, Blue Origin will return to a steady workflow in order to complete work on its second New Glenn rocket.
In a post-launch statement on X, Limp said they are hoping to achieve even more with this next go around.
“We did it! Orbital. Great night for Team Blue,” Limp said. “On to spring and trying again on the landing.”
Bezos told Aviation Week that the company has about seven or eight upper stages in flow at their manufacturing facility, which lies just outside of the gates to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He said there are also two boosters in work.
This mission was the first on the path to certify the New Glenn rocket to earn contracts as part of the U.S. Space Force’s National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program. It will compete against SpaceX and its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets as well as United Launch Alliance and its Vulcan rocket.
