FAA demands investigation into accident following New Glenn’s failed landing

WASHINGTON — While Blue Origin considers the first flight of its New Glenn rocket a success, the company will need to investigate an accident before its next launch.

New Glenn took off on its inaugural launch, called NG-1, on January 16 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The second stage reached orbit, although the first stage failed to land on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean as planned.

The NG-1 mission’s payload was Blue Ring Pathfinder, a technology demonstrator for the company’s planned Blue Ring Orbital Transfer Vehicle. The payload remained attached to the upper stage, testing communications, power and other systems.

The company claims that these tests were conclusive. “Our Blue Ring Pathfinder achieved all of our mission objectives during the planned six-hour journey after being inserted into New Glenn’s desired orbit with an apogee of 19,300 km and perigee of 2,400 km at an inclination of 30 degrees,” Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, said in a post on social media January 17.

Limp added that the upper stage “succeeded in insertion with a deviation of less than 1% from our exact orbital injection goal.” Data from the US Space Force’s Space-Track.org service shows the upper stage in an orbit of 2,426 kilometers by 19,251 kilometers with an inclination of 29.99 degrees.

Blue Origin has not released any further details about the mission beyond Limp’s message since a press release shortly after launch. This does not include any information on the fate of the first stage, which was headed for a landing on the company’s landing platform, jacklynafter separation of the stages. First stage telemetry, as displayed on the launch webcast, froze around T+7:55, near the planned end of a three-engine reentry burn. The stage took place at an altitude of 25,672 meters and was traveling at that time at 6,896 kilometers per hour.

The failure of the landing attempt will force the company to investigate the accident. “The FAA is aware that an anomaly occurred during the Blue Origin NG-1 mission launched from the Cape Canaveral space station in Florida on January 16,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement, referring to to the failure of the booster landing. “FAA asks Blue Origin to conduct accident investigation.”

Blue Origin will lead the accident investigation, standard procedure for such reviews, with participation from the FAA. The agency must approve the final report and any corrective actions before allowing launches to resume.

It is unclear whether this investigation will affect the timing of upcoming New Glenn launches. Limp said in a statement immediately after the launch that the company was planning its next launch for the spring, but did not provide a more specific timeline or identify the payload for that launch.

Despite the failed landing, the company was praised for reaching orbit on its first attempt. “Today’s New Glenn test flight from the Cape Canaveral space station marks a pivotal moment in the development of reusable heavy-lift launch vehicles,” said Clay Mowry, executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and of Astronautics (AIAA) and former Blue Origin executive. in a press release dated January 16. “As a new heavy-lift rocket, New Glenn introduces competition to the launch market, helping accelerate the growth of the space economy by reducing costs, expanding access to space and helping us return on the Moon and on Mars.

“It’s great to see Blue making strong progress in providing competition to SpaceX and providing its customers with additional reusable vehicles capable of carrying large payloads into space,” said Dale Skran, Chief Operating Officer and senior vice president of the National Space Society, a space advocacy organization. band.

However, some have privately criticized the company for choosing to place the upper stage in a high transfer orbit that does not meet orbital debris mitigation guidelines. Although this orbit avoids highly populated regions of low and medium Earth orbit, a rupture could create debris that migrates to these orbits.

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