Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket enters orbit after liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center on its maiden flight in Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 16, 2025.
Gregg Newton | Afp | Getty Images
Blue Origin launched its New Glenn high-rise rocket for the first time on Thursday, in a crucial milestone for Jeff Bezos’ space company.
New Glenn thundered off the launch pad in the early hours of the morning in Florida, reaching space and eventually making it into orbit as part of a long-awaited debut mission. Blue Origin also attempted to land the rocket booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean, but the booster was lost during re-entry into the atmosphere.
The launch is a defining moment for Blue Origin.
Although founded 25 years ago, Bezos’ company had yet to fly into orbit – with its much smaller New Shepard rocket carrying only humans and requiring short trips to the edge of space. The flight of New Glenn marks Blue Origin’s entry into a market dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and is crucial to unlocking the billionaire founder’s larger ambitions.
No one was aboard the flight of New Glenn, which carried a small test payload into space. The rocket was named to honor the late John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station before January 16, 2025.
Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Initially the company aimed for the daring feat of flying NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars in New Glenn’s debut. But with a dwindling launch window, the agency delayed ESCAPADE for a later launch. Blue Origin also has orders from AmazonThe Kuiper Project for at least 12 launches of its Internet satellites, as well as plans to launch the Blue Moon and Rocky Orbital lunar space station. Bezos founded Amazon six years before creating Blue Origin.
Headquartered in the Seattle suburb of Kent, Washington, Blue Origin has over 10,000 employees there and in half a dozen other major locations around the country, including industry strongholds in Texas, Florida and Alabama. Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp previously told CNBC that Blue Origin has been “in kind of an R&D phase for a long time,” an aspect of the company’s culture that he is trying to change.
Blue plans to quickly scale up the cadence of New Glenn missions, aiming to conduct up to 10 New Glenn launches this year. Originally targeted for a 2020 debut, the rocket faced years of delays.
MISSION
A few minutes after launch, the rocket’s booster separated and went back through the atmosphere. The booster – nicknamed “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance” – was attempting to land on the company’s barge Jacklyn some 600 miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, but failed. Blue Origin’s webcast last showed the booster at an altitude of about 84,000 feet.
While New Glenn didn’t put any satellites into orbit during the flight, it did carry a small demonstration version of the company’s Blue Ring spacecraft. Known in the industry as an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV), or space tow, the Blue Ring is designed to host satellites and spacecraft, sending them from the rocket to their intended target.
As is typical with the debut of an orbital rocket, New Glenn’s launch had a few bumps along the way, with multiple daily delays due to technical problems with the rocket and weather.
Rocket
The first New Glenn rocket is rolling in preparation for launch.
Blue origin
New Glenn is the size of a 30-story skyscraper 322 meters tall, almost as tall as the Saturn V rockets that carried the Apollo missions to the Moon, and 23 meters in diameter. Blue’s rocket is powered by seven of the company’s BE-4 engines, together generating nearly 4 million pounds of thrust, and New Glenn’s nose is wide enough and long enough to launch three school buses into space at once.
The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane and is designed to be partially reusable, as Blue Origin aims to launch, land and re-launch each booster up to 25 times.
In terms of mass delivered to orbit for launch, New Glenn fits between SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, with Blue Origin’s vehicle designed to lift up to 45,000 kilograms (or about 100,000 pounds) into low orbit. Earth.
Blue Origin has not disclosed the total cost or price for launching its New Glenn rockets. Three years ago, Blue Origin said it had invested $2.5 billion to date in the development of New Glenn. And, according to one competitor’s estimate, New Glenn sells for about $70 million per launch.
So far in the orbital mission industry charts, Blue Origin hasn’t entered the serious rocket game, as the US launch market remains dominated by SpaceX, followed by Rocket LaboratoryUnited Launch Alliance and Firefly Aerospace.
Now, Blue Origin has a foothold with New Glenn in the most lucrative part of the launch market: Military flight. Last year Blue Origin joined SpaceX and ULA in the Pentagon’s $5.6 billion National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, allowing the company to compete for contracts.
While Blue Origin has fallen behind SpaceX in the industry, Bezos has remained optimistic about his company’s potential.
“I think it’s going to be the best business I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s going to take some time,” Bezos said recently.
Jeff, welcome to the club.
