CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Blue Origin launched its massive new rocket on its first test flight Thursday, sending a prototype satellite into orbit thousands of miles above Earth.
Named after the first American to orbit Earth, the New Glenn rocket lifted off from Florida, rising from the same platform used to launch NASA’s Mariner and Pioneer spacecraft a half-century ago.
In the works for years and with significant funding from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the 320-foot (98-meter) rocket carried an experimental platform designed to host satellites or release them into their appropriate orbits.
All seven main engines fired upon liftoff as the rocket streaked into the pre-dawn sky, to the delight of spectators lining nearby beaches. Bezos joined in on the Mission Control action, and Blue Origin employees erupted in joy once the craft successfully reached orbit 13 minutes later, a feat that drew praise from Elon Musk of SpaceX.
The first stage booster missed landing on a barge in the Atlantic, but the company stressed that the most important goal had been achieved. Bezos said before the flight that it was “a little crazy” to even try to land the booster on the first try.
“We did it!” Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp said via X that it has reached orbit. “Let’s head to spring and try again when we land.”
For this test, the satellite was supposed to stay inside the second stage while circling the Earth. Plans called for the second stage to be placed in a safe state to remain in high, out-of-the-way orbit, consistent with NASA practices to minimize space waste.
New Glenn was supposed to fly before dawn Monday, but ice buildup in critical plumbing caused a delay. The rocket is designed to carry spacecraft and possibly astronauts into orbit and also to the moon.
Founded 25 years ago by Bezos, Blue Origin has been launching paying passengers to the edge of space since 2021, including itself. The short hops from Texas use smaller rockets, named after the first American in space, Alan Shepard. New Glenn, which pays homage to John Glenn, is five times larger.
Blue Origin has invested more than $1 billion in the New Glenn Launch Site, rebuilding the historic Cape Canaveral Space Station Complex 36. The platform is 14 kilometers from the company’s control centers and rocket factory, outside the gates of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Blue Origin plans six to eight New Glenn flights this year, with the next planned for this spring.
In a weekend interview, Bezos declined to disclose his personal investment in the program. He said he doesn’t see Blue Origin competing with Musk’s SpaceX, long the dominator in rocket launches.
“There’s room for a lot of winners,” Bezos said, adding that it was “the very beginning of this new phase of the space age, where we’re all going to work together as an industry… to reduce the cost of space energy. access to space. »
New Glenn is the latest in a series of large, new rockets launched in recent years, including United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, Europe’s upgraded Ariane 6, and NASA’s Space Launch System or SLS, the successor to NASA’s Saturn V. the space agency to send astronauts to the moon.
The largest rocket of all, measuring around 400 feet (123 meters), is SpaceX’s Starship. Musk said the seventh test flight of the full rocket could take place later Thursday from Texas. He hopes to repeat what he achieved in October, catching the booster back on the launch pad with giant mechanical arms.
Starship is what NASA plans to use to land astronauts on the Moon later this decade. The first two moon landings under the space agency’s Artemis program, which follows the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s, will see crews descend from lunar orbit to the surface aboard spacecraft.
Blue Origin’s lander, named Blue Moon, will debut during the astronauts’ third lunar landing.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has pushed for competing lunar landers similar to the strategy of hiring two companies to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Nelson will resign when President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Monday.
Trump tapped tech billionaire Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. Isaacman, who has twice launched into orbit on his own privately funded SpaceX flights, must be approved by the Senate.
New Glenn’s debut was supposed to send twin spacecraft to Mars for NASA. But the space agency pulled them from the planned flight last October when it became clear the rocket would not be ready in time. They will still fly on a New Glenn rocket, but not until spring at the earliest. The two small spacecraft, named Escapade, are intended to study the atmosphere and magnetic environment of Mars while orbiting the red planet.
