Tag: New Glenn

Just a week after a successful launch of its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it will make New Glenn even heavier.

The new super-heavy-lift variant of Blue Origin’s most powerful rocket, known as New Glenn 9×4, will feature nine methane-fueled BE-4 engines on the first stage, up from seven; and four hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engines on the second stage, up from two. The 9×4 rocket will also have a bigger fairing, or nose-cone section, measuring 8.7 meters (28.5 feet) wide, as opposed to 7 meters (23 feet) for the fairing currently in use.

Blue Origin says it’s working to enhance the performance of the rocket engines on both the New Glenn 9×4 and the standard 7×2 model. Other upgrades will include a reusable fairing, a lower-cost tank design and a higher-performing thermal protection system.

The upgrades will be phased into upcoming New Glenn missions starting with the next launch, which is expected to occur early next year. “These enhancements will immediately benefit customers already manifested on New Glenn to fly to destinations including low Earth orbit, the moon and beyond,” the company said in an online update.

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.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture counted down to the final hour tonight, but in the end, the company had to postpone the first-ever orbital launch of its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket due to a stubborn technical glitch.

The launch from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was scrubbed a few minutes after 3 a.m. ET (midnight PT). Today’s three-hour launch window was due to close at 4 a.m. ET.

“We are standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window,” launch commentator Ariane Cornell said. “We are reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt.”

Liftoff had already been delayed twice over the past few days due to concerns about rough seas in the area of the Atlantic where New Glenn’s first-stage booster was slated to land — and the fact that the seas had settled down raised hopes that the launch could take place tonight. But it was not to be.

Whenever it takes place, this would be a milestone launch: Although Blue Origin has been launching much smaller New Shepard rockets on suborbital spaceflights for a decade, it has never tried putting a payload into Earth orbit. That would change with New Glenn’s liftoff.

If New Glenn meets with success, that would mean more competition for Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which currently dominates the orbital launch industry. It would also open the way for a host of applications that Blue Origin aims to support — ranging from satellite constellations to moon missions to a commercial space station.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has encountered two recent failures in its efforts to get orbital-class New Glenn rockets ready for future launches from Florida, Bloomberg News reported today.

For its first-ever launch, set for this fall, New Glenn is scheduled to send two small probes to Mars, to study the Red Planet’s magnetosphere for NASA’s Escapade mission. Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg said the failures damaged rocket hardware for the two launches that are due to come afterward.

No injuries were reported in either incident, according to Bloomberg. One incident was said to involve the crumpling of a section of a New Glenn rocket that was destined for the second launch, in part due to worker error. The other incident reportedly involved an upper rocket portion for the third scheduled launch that failed during stress testing, resulting in an explosion.

A Blue Origin spokesperson told me that the company continues to be on track to start launching New Glenn this year, and that all flight hardware is complete.