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NASA funds studies focusing on orbital transfer vehicles

Illustration: Blue Ring vehicle in orbit
An artist’s conception shows the Blue Ring space platform in orbit. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is among six companies that will be producing studies for NASA looking at low-cost ways to use orbital transfer vehicles to deliver spacecraft to hard-to-reach orbits for the space agency.

The awards will support nine studies in all, with a maximum total value of about $1.4 million, NASA said today.

“With the increasing maturity of commercial space delivery capabilities, we’re asking companies to demonstrate how they can meet NASA’s need for multi-spacecraft and multi-orbit delivery to difficult-to-reach orbits beyond current launch service offerings,” Joe Dant, orbital transfer vehicle strategic initiative owner for the Launch Services Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, said in a news release. “This will increase unique science capability and lower the agency’s overall mission costs.”

Blue Origin will conduct two studies — one that focuses on potential NASA applications for its Blue Ring multi-mission space mobility platform, and another that focuses on how the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket could be used.

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Blue Origin resets the date for New Glenn’s orbital debut

Blue Origin’s New Glenn on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
Blue Origin’s New Glenn on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. (Blue Origin Image)

UPDATE: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s delaying the first-ever launch of its orbital-class New Glenn rocket due to unfavorable weather conditions for landing the first-stage booster.

Liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Launch Complex 36 in Florida had been scheduled for no earlier than 1 a.m. ET Jan. 10 (10 p.m. PT tonight). But in an update posted to the X social-media platform, Blue Origin said the attempt has been rescheduled for a three-hour launch window that opens at 1 a.m. ET Jan. 12 (10 p.m. PT Jan. 11).

The schedule shift was made “due to a high sea state in the Atlantic where we hope to land our booster,” Blue Origin said. Video coverage of the countdown is expected to be streamed via BlueOrigin.com starting about an hour before liftoff.

New Glenn, which is named after the late pioneer astronaut John Glenn, is due to launch Blue Origin’s Blue Ring Pathfinder, a payload that’s designed to test the communications, power and control systems for the company’s Blue Ring multi-use space platform. The test flight is part of a prototyping effort for orbital logistics that’s supported by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.

Blue Origin has been working on the development of New Glenn for more than a decade — and mission controllers are likely to be monitoring the performance of the two-stage rocket at least as closely as they’ll be monitoring the payload.

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Blue Origin and NASA shift New Glenn launch plans

Workers mate sections of New Glenn first stage
Elements of the New Glenn rocket’s first stage are mated at Blue Origin’s factory in Florida. (Blue Origin Photo)

NASA is delaying the launch of its ESCAPADE probes to Mars, which means plans for the debut of Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket will change as well.

New Glenn was previously due to send the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft to Mars as early as next month, but after a review of launch preparations, NASA rescheduled the launch for next spring at the earliest.

Planning for the mission is complicated because of the tight window for launch, necessitated by the alignment of Earth and Mars. Even a small schedule change can result in a months-long delay for liftoff.

After consulting with Blue Origin, the Federal Aviation Administration and range safety managers at the U.S. Space Force, NASA decided to hold off on fueling up the ESCAPADE probes. “The decision was made to avoid significant cost, schedule and technical challenges associated with potentially removing fuel from the spacecraft in the event of a launch delay, which could be caused by a number of factors,” the space agency said today in a mission update.

ESCAPADE — an acronym that stands for “Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers” — is a mission designed to study interactions between the solar wind and Mars’ magnetosphere.

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Universe Today

Starlink on Mars? NASA is paying SpaceX to look into it

Illustration: Starlink satellites in orbit
An artist's conception shows Starlink satellites in orbit. Credit: SpaceX

NASA has given the go-ahead for SpaceX to work out a plan to adapt its Starlink broadband internet satellites for use in a Martian communication network.

The idea is one of a dozen proposals that have won NASA funding for concept studies that could end up supporting the space agency’s strategy for bringing samples from Mars back to Earth for lab analysis. The proposals were submitted by nine companies — also including Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace, Impulse Space, Albedo Space and Redwire Space.

Awardees will be paid $200,000 to $300,000 for their reports, which are due in August. NASA says the studies could lead to future requests for proposals, but it’s not yet making any commitment to follow up.

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Blue Origin makes plans to test Blue Ring tech in orbit

Illustration: Blue Ring logistics vehicle in orbit
An artist’s conception shows the Blue Ring logistics vehicle in orbit. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says that technology for its Blue Ring orbital platform will be put to the test during an upcoming mission sponsored by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.

Blue Ring is a multi-mission, multi-orbit vehicle that’s being developed to facilitate logistical services in orbit. The Pentagon-backed mission, known as DarkSky-1, will demonstrate Blue Origin’s flight system, including space-based data processing and storage capabilities, ground-based radiometric tracking and Blue Ring’s telemetry, tracking and command hardware, also known as TT&C.

“The lessons learned from this DS-1 mission will provide a leap forward for Blue Ring and its ability to provide greater access to multiple orbits, bringing us closer to our vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth,” Paul Ebertz, senior vice president of Blue Origin’s In-Space Systems business unit, said today in a news release.

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