CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Blue Origin launched its large new rocket on its first check flight Thursday, sending up a prototype satellite tv for pc to orbit 1000’s of miles above Earth.
Named after the first American to orbit Earth, the New Glenn rocket blasted off from Florida, hovering from the identical pad used to launch NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft a half-century in the past.
Years within the making with heavy funding by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the 320-foot (98-meter) rocket carried an an experimental platform designed to host satellites or launch them into their correct orbits.
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Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complicated 36 on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photograph/John Raoux) -
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complicated 36 on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photograph/John Raoux) -
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complicated 36 on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photograph/John Raoux) -
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complicated 36 on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photograph/John Raoux) -
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from Launch Complicated 36 on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photograph/John Raoux) -
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket stands prepared for one more launch try from Launch Complicated 36 on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photograph/John Raoux) -
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket stands prepared for one more launch try from Launch Complicated 36 on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photograph/John Raoux) -
Photographers reset their distant cameras for one more launch try of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket from Launch Complicated 36 on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photograph/John Raoux)
All seven essential engines fired at liftoff because the rocket blazed by way of the predawn sky to the delight of spectators lining close by seashores. Firm staff erupted in cheers and frenzied applause as soon as the craft efficiently reached orbit 13 minutes later, a feat that drew fast reward from none aside from SpaceX’s Elon Musk.
Bezos took half within the motion from Mission Management, standing with crossed arms as he gazed out a financial institution of home windows and watched New Glenn soar.
“We did it! Orbital,” Blue Origin’s CEO Dave Limp stated through X.
For this check, the satellite tv for pc was meant to stay contained in the second stage whereas circling Earth. The mission was anticipated to final six hours, with the second stage then positioned in a secure situation to remain in a excessive, out-of-the-way orbit in accordance with NASA’s practices for minimizing house junk.
The primary-stage booster missed its touchdown on a barge within the Atlantic minutes after liftoff so it might be recycled, however the firm harassed that the extra essential purpose was for the check satellite tv for pc to achieve orbit. Bezos stated earlier than the flight it was “slightly loopy” to even attempt to land the booster on the primary attempt.
“Nice night time for Staff Blue. On to spring and making an attempt once more on the touchdown,” Limp stated.
New Glenn was imagined to fly earlier than daybreak Monday, however ice buildup in essential plumbing precipitated a delay. The rocket is constructed to haul spacecraft and ultimately astronauts to orbit and likewise the moon.
Based 25 years in the past by Bezos, Blue Origin has been launching paying passengers to the sting of house since 2021, together with himself. The quick hops from Texas use smaller rockets named after the primary American in house, Alan Shepard. New Glenn, which honors John Glenn, is 5 occasions taller.
Blue Origin poured greater than $1 billion into New Glenn’s launch web site, rebuilding historic Complicated 36 at Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station. The pad is 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the corporate’s management facilities and rocket manufacturing facility, outdoors the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Area Heart.
Blue Origin envisions six to eight New Glenn flights this 12 months, if every little thing goes properly, with the subsequent one arising this spring.
In a weekend interview, Bezos declined to reveal his private funding in this system. He stated he doesn’t see Blue Origin in a contest with Musk’s SpaceX, lengthy the rocket-launching dominator.
“There’s room for many winners,” Bezos stated from the rocket manufacturing facility on Sunday night, including that this was the “very, very starting of this new section of the house age, the place we’re all going to work collectively as an business … to decrease the price of entry to house.”
New Glenn is the most recent in a collection of massive, new rockets to launch in recent times, together with United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, Europe’s upgraded Ariane 6, and NASA’s Area Launch System or SLS, the house company’s successor to the Saturn V for sending astronauts to the moon.
The largest rocket of all, at roughly 400 toes (123 meters), is SpaceX’s Starship. Musk stated the seventh check flight of the complete rocket may happen later Thursday from Texas. He hopes to repeat what he pulled off in October, catching the returning booster on the launch pad with large mechanical arms.
Starship is what NASA plans to make use of to land astronauts on the moon later this decade. The primary two moon landings below the house company’s Artemis program, which follows the Apollo missions of the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies, will see crews descending from lunar orbit to the floor in Starships.
Blue Origin’s lander, dubbed Blue Moon, will make its debut on the third lunar landing by astronauts.
NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson pushed for competing moon landers just like the technique to rent two corporations to ferry astronauts to and from the Worldwide Area Station. Nelson will step down when President-elect Donald Trump takes workplace on Monday.
Trump has tapped tech billionaire Jared Isaacman to run NASA. Isaacman, who has twice rocketed into orbit on his personal privately financed SpaceX flights, have to be accepted by the Senate.
New Glenn’s debut was imagined to ship twin spacecraft to Mars for NASA. However the house company pulled them from final October’s deliberate flight when it grew to become clear the rocket would not be prepared in time. They’ll nonetheless fly on a New Glenn rocket, however not till spring on the earliest. The 2 small spacecraft, named Escapade, are supposed to research the Martian environment and magnetic atmosphere whereas orbiting the crimson planet.
