New Glenn, Blue Origin’s new launcher, finally took off for the very first time on the morning of January 16. A great success which marks the company’s arrival in the big leagues… even if it is still far from to be able to compete with the giants of the sector.
New Glenn, named in honor of American senator and astronaut John Glenn, is a particularly imposing heavy launcher. With its 98 meters high (35 more than Ariane 6) for a payload capacity of 45 tonnes in low Earth orbit, it is a heavy launcher which is positioned approximately halfway between the Falcon 9 and SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy.
A long-awaited mission
The machine had been in development for more than 10 years, and like many other rockets, this road was strewn with pitfalls. Originally, it was supposed to celebrate its maiden flight by 2020, but this deadline was considerably delayed by numerous technical problems, particularly with its methalox BE-4 engines.
This launch was therefore eagerly awaited by Blue Origin, which is counting on its new spearhead to deploy its constellation of Kuiper satellites as well as numerous other satellites on behalf of the American government and private clients. And fortunately for Jeff Bezos’ company, this first mission went very well overall.
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-A well-executed mission
New Glenn began by taking off without problems from the Space Force base at Cape Canaveral – a relief for the technical teams, knowing that the famous BE-4 engines of the first stage have given engineers a lot of trouble in recent years. After three minutes of flight, another critical step, namely the separation of the two stages, took place without a hitch. Finally, at T+12 minutes, it validated its main objective when its second stage reached the speed of 28,800 km/h, thus entering low Earth orbit – a great first for Blue Origin, all of whose machines had until then been limited to suborbital flights.
There is still one box that the firm has not managed to tick. Indeed, New Glenn is supposed to be partially reusable, with a first stage designed to return to land on an autonomous barge positioned in the ocean. Unfortunately, the first stage was lost en route and never arrived at its destination.
However, this was only a secondary objective that Blue Origin probably did not expect to validate on the first try. Even the Falcon 9 booster, which today serves as a reference in this field, was only recovered on the 7th attempt.
A very exciting future
Rather than criticizing the company for this “failure” which ultimately turns out to be quite anecdotal, it is appropriate to applaud the fact that it succeeded in reaching orbit on its first attempt – a success which testifies to the fact that New Glenn is already a relatively mature machine despite his youth.
Overall, this NG1 mission was a great success. Certainly, there remains a lot of work to allow Blue Origin to rise to the level of SpaceX and other industry leaders like ULA. Additionally, it will take several more test flights to bring New Glenn to maturity. But whatever happens, the blue team has officially entered the big leagues, and it will be very interesting to see how it will manage to find a place in an increasingly competitive industrial ecosystem.
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