Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, announced in 2016, is set to debut no earlier than January 8, 2025, at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station with its first unmanned launch and orbital insertion scheduled for Friday. The event marks a milestone for the private space company founded by Jeff Bezos.
With this move, Blue Origin aims to challenge Elon Musk's dominance in the reusable rocket market.
Standing 98 meters tall, the New Glenn rocket can transport up to 45 tons to low Earth orbit, more than double SpaceX's Falcon 9 capacity of 23 tons but less than the Falcon Heavy's 63.8 tons. The payload capability positions New Glenn between SpaceX's two main rockets as a competitive option for heavy launches.
Jeff Bezos had promised a first flight of New Glenn for 2021, but three years later, the rocket had not yet launched, with the inaugural flight postponed for a final series of tests, according to South China Morning Post. Blue Origin progressed more slowly than SpaceX, partly due to a more cautious approach to design and methodical testing rather than dramatic unveilings, according to Deutsche Welle.
After years of development and testing, including a successful hot-fire test of its first stage on December, New Glenn is finally prepared for its inaugural flight. In its inaugural flight, the first stage is scheduled to attempt a controlled landing on a barge at sea, a maneuver similar to those performed by SpaceX.
If the first launch is successful, it will be followed by additional flights in 2025, with Blue Origin planning to conduct a dozen launches that year and double the cadence afterward, according to Les Echos. The success of New Glenn could spark fierce competition between Bezos and Musk, as both companies continue to innovate and emphasize missions beyond lunar landings, reported Newsweek.
Blue Origin's New Glenn will play a pivotal role in Amazon's Project Kuiper, a satellite internet service poised to compete with SpaceX's Starlink, and will be responsible for launching part of the planned Amazon network, according to Le Figaro. The Kuiper project plans to deploy more than 3,000 satellites and has successfully tested two satellites in orbit this year, but Amazon still needs thousands more to provide the coverage it envisions, according to Les Echos.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX secured substantial contracts from NASA to transport astronauts as part of the Artemis program, which aims to reach the lunar surface in the late 2020s. "If I were still a senior official at NASA, I would be delighted to finally have competition to SpaceX's Falcon 9, which entered service in the early 2010s," said G. Scott Hubbard, former NASA administrator and professor at Stanford University.
"This inaugural flight will represent a great advance for Blue Origin and for the space industry," said Laura Forczyk, a space industry analyst, according to Le Figaro. "With this large-capacity rocket, the company will be able to not only compete with satellite launches, delivery, and transport in space, but it will also have the capability to launch astronauts," Forczyk added.
This article was written in collaboration with generative AI company Alchemiq