Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin prepared for the first launch of its New Glenn rocket from Florida amid competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, according to Reuters.
The partially reusable New Glenn launch vehicle was on the Blue Origin launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, ready for liftoff at 1:30 a.m. ET (06:30 GMT) after loading methane and liquid oxygen as propellants.
The launch represents the culmination of a decade-long, multi-billion-dollar development effort. The mission includes an attempt to land the first stage of the New Glenn booster on a sea-fairing barge in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after liftoff. Meanwhile, the rocket’s second stage will proceed to orbit.
The thing we’re most nervous about is the booster landing. Clearly on a first flight you could have an anomaly at any mission phase, so anything could happen.
Inside New Glenn is the first prototype of Blue Origin’s Blue Ring spacecraft. The company plans to sell this manoeuvrable spacecraft to the Pentagon and commercial customers for national security missions and satellite servicing.
Getting a spacecraft into its intended orbit with the first rocket launch would be a rare achievement for a space company. Bezos stated:
If we could do that, that would be a great success. Landing the booster would be icing on the cake.
However, the development faced numerous delays as Elon Musk’s SpaceX evolved into an industry giant with its reusable Falcon 9 rocket. In late 2023, Bezos decided to accelerate Blue Origin by prioritising the development of New Glenn and BE-4 engines. He also appointed Dave Limp as CEO.
According to the specs, New Glenn is more than twice as powerful as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and has dozens of launch contracts with customers totalling billions of dollars. Company officials claim Limp has sparked a sense of urgency for the company to compete with SpaceX.
