For the first time ever, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has put a payload in orbit, using its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket.
The two-stage rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 2:03 a.m. ET Jan. 16 (11:03 p.m. PT tonight). Cheers could be heard coming from Blue Origin employees watching the launch.
After stage separation, New Glenn’s first-stage booster executed an autonomous descent with the aim of landing on a barge stationed hundreds of miles offshore.
The booster, nicknamed “So You’re Telling Me There’s a Chance,” missed the target. “We did in fact lose the booster,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said. Landing the booster would have been a bonus, but it wasn’t considered a requirement for mission success.
The prime objective of the mission, known as NG-1, was to test the communications and control systems for Blue Ring, a multi-mission space mobility platform that’s under development at Blue Origin.
For Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin, and for Bezos, the mere fact that New Glenn made it to orbit was at least as significant as the Blue Ring Pathfinder test. Although the company has launched smaller New Shepard rockets on suborbital spaceflights for a decade, it had never before put a payload into Earth orbit.
That changed tonight.
