Tag: New Glenn

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Blue Origin resets schedule for space milestones

Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith
Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith shows a video of a BE-4 rocket engine firing during the Aerospace Futures Alliance Summit. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

LYNNWOOD, Wash. — Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, is now planning to send its first crew on a suborbital space trip during the first half of 2019, and launch its first orbital-class New Glenn rocket in 2021.

That’s the word from Bob Smith, CEO of the Kent, Wash.-based company, who spoke here today at the Aerospace Futures Alliance Summit.

The schedule represents a slight shift to the right for Blue Origin’s development plan, which had been targeting this year for the first crewed flight of its New Shepard suborbital spaceship and 2020 for New Glenn’s first flight. That’s not totally unexpected, considering the challenges involved.

Even that schedule is ambitious. “We’ve got a lot of work on our hands,” Smith told the audience.

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Blue Origin plans rocket service center in Florida

New Glenn landing
An artist’s conception shows Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket booster landing on a recovery ship. (Blue Origin Illustration via YouTube)

Blue Origin, the space venture created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has struck a deal with Florida’s spaceport authority to build a $60 million rocket testing and refurbishment facility near Cape Canaveral.

The facility would be constructed at Space Florida’s Exploration Park to provide support services for the $205 million, 750,000-square-foot New Glenn rocket manufacturing factory that Blue Origin already has built in Florida. Orbital-class New Glenn rockets are due to enter service by as early as 2020 and will be sent into space from Launch Complex 36, which is being leased from Space Florida.

Blue Origin is designing the New Glenn rocket to have a reusable first-stage booster, and the new facility would be where recovered boosters are refurbished and tested. The company’s plans were the subject of a Space Florida board meeting last month, and came to light this week in an Orlando Sentinel report.

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Blue Origin shows off upper-stage rocket engine

BE-3U rocket engine testing
Blue Origin’s BE-3U upper-stage rocket engine undergoes testing. (Blue Origin via Twitter)

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is sharing a short video clip featuring the lesser-known rocket engine for its orbital-class New Glenn rocket.

The spotlight on the hydrogen-fueled BE-3U engine comes amid reports that Blue Origin is rapidly ramping up its New Glenn development program — and amid questions over whether Blue Origin can start launching New Glenn by the end of 2020, as originally planned.

There’s also lots of activity relating to other aspects of Bezos’ aspirations.

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Jeff Bezos shares 114-second rocket engine video

Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine is an essential part of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ vision of getting millions of people living and working in space, so he’s anxious to show it works.

But not anxious enough to cut corners. The video he shared today on Twitter and Instagram shows a work in progress: a test firing of the methane-fueled BE-4 at Blue Origin’s facilities in West Texas, with the power dialed down to 65 percent of maximum and the blast limited to 114 seconds.

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Blue Origin strikes deal to launch Japan satellites

Blue Origin and Sky Perfect JSAT executives
Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith and founder Jeff Bezos meet with Sky Perfect JSAT CEO Shinji Takada and other executives. (Blue Origin Photo via Twitter)

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, says it has signed up Japan’s Sky Perfect JSAT for a satellite launch to geostationary orbit in the 2020s.

Today’s announcement of the deal was timed to coincide with the Satellite 2018 conference in Washington, D.C., one of the year’s top events for satellite operators and launch providers.

In its tweet, Blue Origin didn’t provide much detail about the deal, such as the pricing or the timing for the launch. But the agreement involves sending up a yet-to-be-named Sky Perfect JSAT satellite on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which is currently under development.

Blue Origin is targeting 2020 for the first launch of New Glenn — which is named after the late senator-astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth.

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Blue Origin ramps up Florida rocket facility

Propellant tanks
Tanks for liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas, the propellants to be used by Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, are lined up at Launch Complex 36 in Florida. (Blue Origin Photo via Twitter)

Blue Origin hasn’t put up the “Grand Opening” sign yet, but there’s clearly business going on at the Florida rocket facilities built by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture.

The latest sign came today, when Blue Origin tweeted out a picture of propellant tanks being delivered to Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which is destined to host Blue Origin’s orbital-class New Glenn rocket.

“Starting to look more and more like a launch pad!” the tweet read.

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Blue Origin announces Mu satellite launch deal

New Glenn rocket
An artist’s conception shows the New Glenn rocket during ascent. (Blue Origin Photo)

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, announced yet another agreement to launch a telecommunications satellite with its next-generation New Glenn rocket in the 2020s.

The latest customer is Mu Space Corp., a Thai startup that unveiled its plans for terrestrial and satellite-based broadband data services (plus space tourism) in the Asia-Pacific region just last month.

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Jeff Bezos says BE-4 rocket test went awry

BE-4 rocket engine testing
In a photo from March 2017, the BE-4 rocket engine’s powerpack is installed on a stand at Blue Origin’s West Texas proving ground for startup transient testing. (Blue Origin Photo)

In a rare update, the Blue Origin space venture founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos reported that it lost a set of powerpack test hardware for its BE-4 rocket engine over the weekend, but added that such a setback is “not unusual” during development.

“That’s why we always set up our development programs to be hardware-rich,” the company tweeted today. “Back into testing soon.”

Blue Origin is headquartered in Kent, Wash., but the BE-4 is being tested at its facility in West Texas, on ranchland owned by Bezos. The powerpack is the heart of a rocket engine, pumping fuel and oxidizer to the engine’s combustion chamber.

The current round of engine testing is key to the company’s fortunes: Blue Origin is planning to use the BE-4, which is powered by liquefied natural gas, on its own New Glenn orbital-class rocket. Blue Origin already has started lining up satellite customers for the New Glenn.

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Get a peek at Blue Origin’s lunar lander

Blue Moon lander
Blue Origip President Rob Meyerson shows off a concept for the Blue Moon lunar lander during a session at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. Other panelists include Jonathan Arenberg, chief systems engineer for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope; former astronaut John Grunsfeld; and Mary Lynne Dittmar of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. – Blue Origin, the space venture backed by Amazon billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos, is providing a first look at the design for the Blue Moon lander it wants to use for deliveries to the lunar surface in the 2020s.

It’s been more than a month since Blue Origin’s plan for sending payloads to the moon for a permanent settlement came to light – but the company’s president, Rob Meyerson, lifted a veil a bit higher by showing off an artist’s conception of the lander here at the 33rd Space Symposium.

As the four-legged lander design was displayed on screen, Meyerson told the crowd that the spacecraft could be launched on NASA’s own heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket, or SLS, which is currently under development. It could also go on United Launch Alliance’s existing Atlas 5 rocket, or on Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket – which is due to start flying by 2020.

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Blue Origin’s first launch customer: Eutelsat

Jeff Bezos and Rodolphe Belmer
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon as well as the Blue Origin space venture, takes the stage with Eutelsat CEO Rodolphe Belmer. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos revealed satellite operator Eutelsat as the first paying customer for his Blue Origin space venture’s New Glenn orbital rocket, and showed off a new animation depicting the rocket taking off, delivering a satellite to orbit and landing on a barge at sea.

Bezos and the chairman of this week’s Satellite 2017 conference, Jeffrey Hill, brought the Paris-based satellite operator’s CEO, Rodolphe Belmer, on stage as a surprise guest during today’s keynote chat.

“We couldn’t hope for a better first partner,” Bezos said.

In a news release, Eutelsat said the first payload would be a geostationary satellite, to be launched in the 2021-2022 time frame.

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