Named after the first American to orbit Earth, the New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida, rising from the same platform used to launch NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft a half-year ago -century.
The result of years of work and significant funding from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the 98-meter (320-foot) rocket carries an experimental platform designed to accommodate satellites or place them in their respective orbits.
The seven main engines were ignited at takeoff and the rocket crossed the sky before dawn, to the delight of spectators gathered on the nearby beaches. The company’s employees began to applaud wildly when the craft managed to reach orbit 13 minutes later, a feat which was praised by Elon Musk, the boss of SpaceX.
Mr. Bezos took in the action from Mission Control, arms crossed, watching New Glenn fly away through a bank of windows.
“We made it! Orbital,” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp wrote via X.
For this test, the satellite had to stay inside the second stage while it orbited the Earth. The mission was expected to last six hours, with the second stage then placed in a safe condition to remain in a high orbit, out of reach, in accordance with NASA practices to minimize space waste.
SEE ALSO | SpaceX sends billionaire on first private spacewalk
The first stage missed landing on a barge in the Atlantic minutes after liftoff so it could be recycled, but the company stressed that the most important goal was for the test satellite to reach orbit. Bezos said before the flight that it was “a little crazy” to try to land the booster on the first try.
“It’s a great night for the blue team. In the spring, we will try to land the booster again,” explained Mr. Limp.
New Glenn was scheduled to take off before dawn Monday, but ice buildup in critical pipes caused a delay. The rocket is designed to carry spacecraft and eventually astronauts into orbit and to the Moon.
Founded 25 years ago by Bezos, Blue Origin has launched paying passengers to the frontier of space since 2021, including itself. The short trips from Texas use smaller rockets named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard. New Glenn, which honors John Glenn, is five times larger.
Blue Origin has invested more than $1 billion in the New Glenn Launch Site, rebuilding the historic Cape Canaveral Space Station Complex 36. The launch pad is nine miles from the company’s control centers and rocket factory, outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
SEE ALSO | Catapults inspired by NASA at the University of Sherbrooke
Blue Origin is planning six to eight New Glenn flights this year, if all goes well, with the next planned for the spring.
In a weekend interview, Mr. Bezos refused to disclose his personal investment in the program. He said he doesn’t see Blue Origin competing with Musk’s SpaceX, which has long dominated the rocket launch market.
“There is room for many winners,” Mr. Bezos said Sunday evening from the rocket factory, adding that it was “the very beginning of this new phase of the space age, where we let’s all work together as an industry […] to reduce the cost of access to space.
New Glenn is the latest in a series of new large rockets launched in recent years, including United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, Europe’s upgraded Ariane 6 and NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), the successor to the Saturn V of the space agency for sending astronauts to the moon.
The tallest rocket of all, at around 123 meters tall, is SpaceX’s Starship rocket. Musk said the seventh test flight of the full rocket could take place later Thursday from Texas. He hopes to repeat what he managed in October, catching the booster back on the launch pad using giant mechanical arms.
Starship is the spacecraft that NASA plans to use to land astronauts on the Moon later this decade. In the first two moon landings planned as part of the space agency’s Artemis program, which follows the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, crews will descend from lunar orbit to the surface aboard spacecraft.
Blue Origin’s lander, named Blue Moon, will debut during astronauts’ third contact with the Moon.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has emphasized competition among lunar landers, similar to the strategy of having two companies transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Bill Nelson will leave office when President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday.
The latter entrusted the management of NASA to technology billionaire Jared Isaacman. Mr. Isaacman, who has already flown into orbit twice aboard his own privately funded SpaceX flights, must be approved by the Senate.
The debut of New Glenn was supposed to allow NASA to send two spacecraft to Mars. But the space agency pulled them from the planned flight last October when it became clear the rocket would not be ready in time. They will still fly aboard a New Glenn rocket, but not until spring at the earliest. The two small spacecraft, called Escapade, are intended to study the Martian atmosphere and magnetic environment in orbit around the red planet.
