Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket stands prepared for an additional launch try from Launch Advanced 36 on the Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station on Wednesday.
John Raoux/AP
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John Raoux/AP
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Blue Origin launched its large new rocket on its first take a look at flight Thursday, sending up a prototype satellite tv for pc to orbit 1000’s of miles above Earth.
Named after the primary 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.
For this take a look at, the satellite tv for pc was anticipated 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 aimed to land on a barge within the Atlantic minutes after liftoff so it could possibly be recycled.
New Glenn was presupposed 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 instances taller.
Blue Origin poured greater than $1 billion into New Glenn’s launch web site, rebuilding historic Advanced 36 at Cape Canaveral Area Pressure Station. The pad is 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the corporate’s management facilities and rocket manufacturing unit, outdoors the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Area Middle.
Bezos — collaborating within the launch from Mission Management — declined to reveal his private funding in this system. He mentioned he doesn’t see Blue Origin in a contest with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, lengthy the rocket-launching dominator.
Blue Origin envisions six to eight New Glenn flights this yr, if every little thing goes effectively, with the subsequent one developing this spring.
“There’s room for plenty of winners” Bezos mentioned from the rocket manufacturing unit over the weekend, 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 huge, 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 ft (123 meters), is SpaceX’s Starship. Elon Musk mentioned the seventh take a look at flight of the complete rocket might 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 underneath the house company’s Artemis program, which follows the Apollo missions of the Sixties and 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 much like the technique to rent two firms 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 authorised by the Senate.
New Glenn’s debut was presupposed to ship twin spacecraft to Mars for NASA. However the house company pulled them from final October’s deliberate flight when it turned clear the rocket would not be prepared in time. They may nonetheless fly on a New Glenn rocket, however not till spring on the earliest. The 2 small spacecraft, named Escapade, are supposed to examine the Martian environment and magnetic setting whereas orbiting the purple planet.
