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The New Glenn rocket, from the American space company Blue Origin, made its first flight into orbit this Thursday, January 16, 2025. This flight, postponed several times, had been awaited for years.
“We did it!”, rejoiced boss David Limp in a message on X. The flight of the New Glenn rocket had been expected for years and had been postponed several times. The Blue Origin space company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos carried out its first flight into orbit this Thursday, January 16, in more than 20 years of existence. New Glenn successfully took off from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida, United States.
The mission achieved its “primary objective,” which was putting the second stage of the rocket into orbit. The second stage has reached “its final orbit” and the prototype of the Blue Ring multipurpose tug carried by New Glenn “is receiving data and working well,” Blue Origin said in a statement. Blue Ring is a spacecraft intended to perform operations in space and move satellites to their final orbits.
In addition to entering orbit, Blue Origin intended to attempt during this first flight to recover the first stage of its rocket, the booster, by landing it in a controlled manner on a barge at sea, but the teams lost the booster.
New flights in 2025
After this success, other New Glenn flights are expected to follow in 2025. Blue Origin has already signed contracts with several clients, including the American space agency for an unmanned mission to Mars, and the American government for security missions. national. On the commercial side, it plans to deploy internet satellites for several companies. She should also be responsible for launching satellites from the Amazon group.
Competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX
Although Blue Origin has been taking tourists for a few minutes into space with its New Shepard rocket for several years, it has not yet conducted any orbital flights. With his new New Glenn rocket, Jeff Bezos aims to enter the new market for launching commercial and military satellites into orbit as well as spaceships and astronauts, and thus compete with SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company.
Elon Musk, who currently dominates the market with his Falcon9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, was quick to greet his rival Jeff Bezos. “Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt!” Elon Musk posted on his X platform to Jeff Bezos. “Thank you,” the latter replied.
The two Silicon Valley figures each founded their space companies in the early 2000s, but Blue Origin has progressed at a much slower pace than SpaceX, in part because of a more cautious approach to design.
