Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has made its first orbital flight, marking a key step for Jeff Bezos’ company in competing with SpaceX for space launches. Despite the failure to recover the reusable first stage, this mission inaugurates a series of strategic launches, notably for Amazon’s Kuiper project.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket took off from Florida early Thursday, January 16, 2025 in the morning for its first mission into space, an inaugural step into Earth orbit for Jeff Bezos’ space company which aims to compete with SpaceX in the field launching satellites. Standing 30 stories tall and featuring a reusable first stage, New Glenn lifted off around 2 a.m. (7 a.m. GMT) from Blue Origin’s launch site at the Cape Canaveral space station.
Hundreds of employees at the company’s headquarters in Kent, Wash., and the rocket factory in Cape Canaveral, Fla., applauded as Ariane Cornell, vice president of Blue Origin, announced that the rocket’s second stage had reached orbit, achieving a long-awaited milestone. “We have achieved our key, critical and number one objective: we have reached orbit safely”Ariane Cornell said during a live broadcast of the company. “And we did it on the first try.”she added.
The culmination of a decade of development for Blue Origin
The rocket’s reusable first stage was supposed to land on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean after separating from the second stage, but it failed to do so, Ariane Cornell confirmed. The booster’s telemetry stopped a few minutes after liftoff. “We actually lost the booster”she said. This mission is the culmination of a decade of development and a multibillion-dollar investment. This is the first time Blue Origin has reached Earth orbit since Jeff Bezos founded the company 25 years ago.
On Sunday, before Blue Origin’s first launch attempt, Jeff Bezos told Reuters he was most nervous about landing the booster. But he added that a successful landing would be “icing on the cake”. The first […]
Read more on sciencesetavenir.fr
