by Despite the bad weather, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launched its powerful New Glenn rocket on its maiden flight early Thursday, lighting up a cloudy night sky as it left Cape Canaveral to compete with Elon Musk’s industry-leading rocket SpaceX.
Like SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9, the New Glenn’s first stage was designed to fly itself to land on a Blue Origin recovery ship after lifting the upper stage out of the lower atmosphere. Reusability is a key element in Bezos’ quest to compete with Musk at the top.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket rises from Pad 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with 3.85 million pounds of thrust from its seven methane-burning BE-4 first stage engines. / Image credit: Blue Origin webcast
The booster completed its task and transported the upper stage into the lower reaches of space. But during the descent to a planned landing on the recovery ship Jacklyn, named after Bezos’ mother, the rocket’s telemetry and video froze.
“We may have lost the booster,” said one company commenter.
The company later confirmed this. But restoring the first stage was always a secondary goal. The New Glenn’s upper stage reached orbit without any apparent problems, thereby achieving the main objective of the flight.
“We made it! Orbital,” said Dave Limp, the company’s CEO
Regarding the booster, Limp said, “We knew that landing our booster…on the first attempt was an ambitious goal. We’ll learn a lot from today and try again on our next launch this spring. Thank you to the entire Blue team for this incredible milestone.”
The mission began at 2:03 a.m. EST when the New Glenn’s seven methane-powered BE-4 engines at the base of the first stage roared to life with a jet of brilliant flames and a ground-shaking roar.
Accelerating gently as it consumed fuel and lost weight, the New Glenn sped away from Pad 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on a bright blue-and-white cloud, providing a spectacular spectacle for cheering Blue Origin employees, local residents and tourists.
The launch was a week later than originally planned due to inclement weather in the booster landing zone and once due to a minor technical issue. However, things appeared to be clear on Thursday as the rocket lifted off and disappeared from view.
A wide angle shot of the launch from nearby Merritt Island, Florida. / Image credit: Blue Origin webcast
Three minutes and 10 seconds after launch, the rocket’s first stage engines shut down, triggering stage separation and ignition of the two hydrogen-powered BE-3U engines powering the rocket’s second stage.
As the upper stage continued its ascent into orbit, the first stage briefly rolled upward before turning in an arc and falling back to Earth, aiming at the Jacklyn, several hundred miles below in the Atlantic Ocean. NASA’s WB-57 photo reconnaissance jet flew nearby and documented the flight with high-resolution cameras.
Three engines were reignited as planned to slow the booster for reentry. However, during the burn, a video showing one of the engines froze and the telemetry on the screen stopped while showing an altitude of 84,226 feet and a speed of 4,285 mph. It was not immediately known whether the rocket exploded or suffered some other malfunction and crashed into the sea.
However, company officials said before the launch that they would learn from any anomalies and conduct another flight in the next few months.
“We have one more (in production) and it will be rolling off the assembly line here shortly,” Limp told CBS News earlier this week. “So we will fly (again) one way or another in the spring.”
While SpaceX tested its Falcon 9 landing system with water splashes before attempting an actual landing, Blue Origin opted for the rocket’s maiden flight. This was based in part on the company’s experience with the launch and landing of its suborbital New Shepard rocket, which carried space tourists, researchers and payloads on short ascents and descents from the lower atmosphere.
Still, company officials acknowledged the challenge, calling the first stage of New Glenn “So you’re telling me there’s an opportunity.”
“There’s no question that it’s a bit risky to land the first time,” Limp said before takeoff.
But the first stage landing was only one of several major goals. The main goal of the flight was to launch the upper stage into orbit along with a Blue Origin-designed spacecraft called the Blue Ring Pathfinder. The Blue Ring is a type of space tug and can host or deploy multiple satellites in different orbits while also providing onboard computer support and even maintenance.
On its first flight, the Blue Ring was to remain attached to the New Glenn’s upper stage throughout the planned five-hour, 50-minute mission.
A graphical representation of New Glenn’s flight profile. / Photo credit: Blue Origin
The flight plan called for two burns of the upper stage engines, the second occurring approximately one hour after liftoff, to place the vehicle and the attached Blue Ring Pathfinder into an elliptical orbit with a high point of about 12,000 miles and a low point of about 12,000 miles around 1,500 miles.
Blue Ring is equipped with 144 feet of deployable solar arrays. It has 13 ports for hosted and deployable payloads and can accommodate satellites or other instruments weighing up to 2.5 tons on its upper deck.
There will be no such payloads on the first flight, but the spacecraft’s systems will undergo a series of tests to learn more about the spacecraft’s performance in space.
Regardless of the results of Thursday’s mission, Blue Origin faces an uphill battle with SpaceX, which currently dominates the commercial launch vehicle market.
Musk was positive about the launch in a post on his X platform, saying, “Congratulations on reaching orbit on the first try!”
SpaceX began launching its Falcon 9 rockets in 2010 and has since fired 436 Falcon 9 family missions, with only two in-flight failures.
To further complicate the picture for Blue Origin, SpaceX is currently testing a gigantic, fully reusable rocket known as the Super Heavy-Starship. It is the most powerful rocket ever built and, once operational, is expected to play an important role in delivering payloads to low Earth orbit, the Moon and beyond.
SpaceX is preparing a Super Heavy Starship rocket, the most powerful rocket ever built, for launch on the program’s seventh test flight on Wednesday. / Image credit: SpaceX
SpaceX plans to launch a Super Heavy spacecraft from the company’s production and testing center in Boca Chica, Texas, on Thursday at 5 p.m. EST.
After the spacecraft is lifted out of the lower atmosphere, the Super Heavy booster is supposed to fly back to its launch pad, where giant mechanical arms would attempt to pry it out of the air. The spacecraft’s upper stage, meanwhile, would orbit the planet and launch ten replica Starlink satellites before a simulated landing in the Indian Ocean.
Around 225 Falcon 9 flights have launched 7,700 Starlink internet satellites since 2019, with thousands more planned. The company already has millions of customers around the world, giving it a huge lead over potential competitors.
How Blue Origin and other rocket builders will deal with SpaceX, its Falcon family rockets and the Super Heavy Starship remains to be seen.
But Blue Origin already has a backlog of satellites waiting to launch on its New Glenn, and is awaiting certification to launch high-priority national security payloads, NASA probes and other civilian satellites.
Amazon plans to launch more than 3,232 broadband relay stations, known as Project Kuiper, to provide space-based internet services in direct competition with SpaceX’s Starlink.
Blue Origin says it has booked 80 launches with New Glenn rockets and boosters from the European consortium Arianespace, United Launch Alliance and even SpaceX to put the data relay stations into orbit.
“I’m very optimistic about space in general,” Limp said. “I think there will be a lot of winners in this segment. It could be SpaceX; I think Blue will be there. But I also believe that there will be new companies that we have never heard of. There are some entrepreneurs in places where no space company has been founded yet who will be at the table.”
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